Claryx, a genomic intelligence startup, came out of stealth with $3.5 million in pre-seed funding.
The round was led by Outlander, with participation from Company Ventures, Boost VC, Neon, Mana Ventures, 640 Oxford, and Precursor.
Claryx was founded by brothers Kurt Hackenberger and Dirk Hackenberger, and it began with their grandmother. In 2004, she went in for a routine procedure, developed C. difficile and then sepsis, turning a few hours into three months in the hospital. No one could tell their family where the infection came from, and over two decades later, most hospitals still can’t.
Her case is far too common. On any given day in 2023, about 1 in 38 hospital patients had at least one healthcare-associated infection, according to the CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Claryx is building the hospital immune system. It reads the genomes of confirmed patient infections, links related cases as outbreaks, and traces each to its likely source. When that source is a reservoir in the building, Claryx finds it in a digital twin sequenced from its air, its water, and its surfaces, all on proprietary chemistry cheap enough to run continuously.
The startup is based in New York and is already serving multiple health systems in the U.S.
“We believe preventable infections are a solvable problem,” said Kurt Hackenberger, Claryx’s Co-Founder and CEO. “Today we can tell a hospital where an infection came from. We’re building toward a future where it never had to happen in the first place.”