Founded by two brothers after their grandmother contracted a hospital infection, Claryx is using genomic surveillance to uncover transmission chains hospitals can’t see.**

Claryx has emerged from stealth with $3.5 million in pre-seed funding to tackle a problem hospitals have struggled with for decades: figuring out where infections come from before scattered cases turn into outbreaks.

The New York-based genomic intelligence startup is building what its founders describe as an immune system for hospitals. Its technology reads the genomes of pathogens found in infected patients, connects genetically related cases, and traces transmission back to likely sources inside a hospital.

Outlander VC led the round, with participation from Company Ventures, Boost VC, Neon, Mana Ventures, 640 Oxford and Precursor.

Claryx launches with $3.5M to build an early-warning system for hospital infections

The idea grew out of an experience that Claryx co-founders Kurt and Dirk Hackenberger have carried with them for more than two decades.

In 2004, their grandmother entered a hospital for what was supposed to be a routine procedure. She contracted *C. difficile*, developed sepsis, and spent three months in the hospital. Their family never received a clear answer about where the infection came from.

Twenty-two years later, that question remains difficult for many hospitals to answer.

Hospitals are good at identifying individual infections. Seeing how those infections are connected is much harder.

A patient infected on one floor may appear unrelated to another patient infected days later somewhere else in the building. Traditional infection surveillance often relies on case counts rising above expected levels. A cluster scattered across several wards may never trigger that alarm.

Genomic sequencing changes the picture.

By reading the genetic fingerprints of pathogens, infection prevention teams can determine whether cases that appear unrelated are part of the same transmission chain. That can reveal an outbreak earlier, help locate its source, and show whether an intervention actually stopped further spread.

Claryx wants to make that type of surveillance continuous rather than something hospitals turn to after an outbreak has already become obvious.

Finding outbreaks hospitals may never know existed

The scale of hospital-acquired infections makes the problem more than a clinical headache.

On any given day, roughly one in 38 patients in U.S. hospitals has at least one healthcare-associated infection, according to federal estimates. Such infections create billions of dollars in healthcare costs each year and can extend hospital stays at a time when many health systems already face tight bed capacity.

Hospitals can take a financial hit, too. Many inpatient stays are reimbursed at predetermined rates, meaning complications that keep a patient hospitalized longer can increase costs without producing a matching increase in reimbursement. Hospitals with poor performance on certain healthcare-associated infection measures can face Medicare payment reductions.

Claryx is betting that earlier detection can change that equation.

Its CloneLink platform combines genomic sequencing of patient infections with what the company calls a digital twin of the hospital environment.

That digital twin is built by sequencing samples from places pathogens can hide, including air, water and surfaces. Claryx can then compare pathogens found in patients with those environmental samples, giving infection prevention teams another way to identify reservoirs inside a building.

A contaminated sink, piece of equipment or other environmental source can be difficult to connect to infections based on location and timing alone. A genomic match can provide a much stronger clue.

The problem has historically been cost.

Running sequencing broadly and continuously across a hospital can become expensive, limiting how often health systems can use it. Claryx says proprietary chemistry developed by Dirk during his doctoral research reduces the cost of the most expensive sequencing step by more than twentyfold.

That cost reduction sits at the center of the company’s pitch. If sequencing becomes inexpensive enough to run continuously, genomic surveillance could move from outbreak investigation to outbreak detection.

Instead of asking what happened after dozens of infections appear, hospitals could start asking whether several seemingly isolated cases are genetically connected.

A real-world study offers a glimpse of the potential

Claryx isn’t starting with a purely theoretical case for genomic surveillance.

A two-year study at UPMC Presbyterian, published in the peer-reviewed journal *Clinical Infectious Diseases*, examined the use of real-time whole-genome sequencing surveillance for hospital-associated infections.

Researchers identified 172 outbreaks involving 476 patients that otherwise may not have been detected through traditional methods. According to the study, interventions following genomic investigation were associated with stopping further transmission in 96% of the outbreaks where an intervention was implemented.

The researchers estimated that the program prevented 62 infections and nearly five deaths over two years. Their economic analysis estimated a 3.2-fold return on the cost of the sequencing program.

The findings point to one of the more interesting arguments for genomic surveillance: hospitals may have far more small outbreaks than conventional surveillance systems reveal.

That distinction matters.

The outbreaks everyone notices are, by definition, the ones that became large enough to attract attention. Smaller transmission chains can remain buried inside normal infection numbers, particularly when cases appear across different wards or over longer periods.

Genomics gives hospitals another signal.

Claryx wants to turn that signal into infrastructure.

Two brothers bring very different backgrounds to the problem

The Hackenberger brothers arrived at Claryx from opposite sides of the business.

Dirk Hackenberger earned his PhD studying infectious disease genomics and antimicrobial resistance under Gerry Wright at McMaster University. His research has appeared in scientific journals including *Nature*, *Nature Communications* and *Cell Host & Microbe*.

Kurt Hackenberger came from finance.

He spent much of the past decade as an investor and most recently served as a vice president at The Carlyle Group. According to Claryx, Kurt led diligence across more than 350 companies and participated in investments totaling more than $3 billion before leaving to build the startup with his brother.

Their grandmother’s experience gave those two backgrounds a common target.

“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.”

That ambition goes beyond identifying individual outbreaks. Claryx is trying to give hospitals something closer to a continuously updated map of how pathogens move through their buildings.

The startup has assembled a scientific advisory board with clinicians and researchers affiliated with Mayo Clinic, Harvard, Yale, Weill Cornell, Washington University, UCLA and McMaster, along with former public health leadership from New York City and the CDC.

Claryx says its technology is already live across multiple health systems.

From hospital surveillance to a broader transmission map

Outlander VC sees a larger opportunity in the same technology.

“Every building people share is a transmission system running invisibly, and Claryx has made it possible to finally see it,” said AJ Smith, Partner at Outlander VC. “We backed Kurt and Dirk because once you can generate this kind of intelligence in a hospital, you can generate it anywhere infection spreads.”

Hospitals are a logical starting point. They bring vulnerable patients, infectious pathogens, shared equipment, plumbing systems, healthcare workers, and constant human movement together under one roof. They have strong financial incentives to reduce infections, too.

The bigger question is whether Claryx can make continuous genomic surveillance practical at hospital scale.

Sequencing technology itself has fallen sharply in price over the past two decades. Turning mountains of genomic data into information an infection prevention team can act on is a separate challenge. Hospitals need results fast enough to change decisions, clear enough for clinical teams to trust, and inexpensive enough to justify running the system every day rather than during emergencies.

Claryx’s $3.5 million round is small compared with the funding flowing into many AI and bioFundpluse. Yet the company is attacking a problem where a relatively modest technology investment could carry an outsized economic impact.

Every infection prevented can mean fewer days in a hospital bed, fewer antibiotics, lower treatment costs and, in some cases, a life saved.

For Kurt and Dirk Hackenberger, the mission goes back to the question their family couldn’t answer in 2004: Where did the infection come from?

Claryx is betting that hospitals finally have the tools to answer it before the next patient gets sick.