Claryx, a genomic intelligence company based in New York, has raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding to deploy technology that detects hospital infection outbreaks before they spread. The round was led by Outlander VC, with participation from Company Ventures, Boost VC, Neon, Mana Ventures, 640 Oxford, and Precursor. The capital will support the commercialization of Claryx’s CloneLink platform, which uses proprietary chemistry to continuously sequence pathogen genomes, linking scattered cases into identifiable outbreaks and tracing them to their source within the hospital environment.

The funding addresses a critical gap in hospital infection prevention. On any given day, roughly 1 in 38 U.S. hospital patients carries an infection they did not arrive with, a problem associated with more deaths than breast cancer or car accidents. These infections cost the healthcare system as much as $45 billion a year. For hospitals operating on margins near 2%, each infection adds roughly 7.8 days to bed occupancy and can exceed fixed admission payments, while high infection rates trigger Medicare penalties running into millions annually.

Traditional surveillance methods fail because they rely on case counts rising above a baseline, meaning outbreaks spread across multiple wards often go unnoticed until they are large. Claryx’s approach reads the genomes of confirmed infections to distinguish real transmission chains from chance occurrences. By matching these genomes against a digital twin of the hospital—sequenced from air, water, and surfaces—the platform identifies reservoirs and confirms whether interventions have stopped transmission.

Clinical Validation and Technology

The efficacy of this continuous genomic surveillance is supported by peer-reviewed evidence. A two-year study at UPMC Presbyterian, published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, utilized real-time genomic surveillance across 476 patients. The University of Pittsburgh research team identified 172 otherwise undetected outbreaks. When traced and acted upon, 96% of these outbreaks did not spread further. The study estimated that the program avoided 62 infections and nearly five deaths, yielding a 3.2-fold return on cost, excluding the value of roughly 480 freed bed-days.

Claryx’s technology relies on chemistry developed by co-founder Dirk Hackenberger during his PhD, which cuts the most expensive sequencing step by more than twentyfold. This reduction in cost enables the continuous monitoring required to catch transmission in real time. The company is currently live across multiple health systems.

Leadership and Advisory Board

Claryx was founded by brothers Kurt Hackenberger, CEO, and Dirk Hackenberger. Kurt previously served as Vice President at The Carlyle Group, where he led diligence across more than 350 companies and invested over $3 billion. Dirk holds a PhD in the genomics of infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance from McMaster University, with publications in Nature, Nature Communications, and Cell Host & Microbe.

The company’s scientific advisory board includes clinicians and researchers from Mayo Clinic, Harvard, Yale, Weill Cornell, Washington University, UCLA, and McMaster, alongside former public health leadership from New York City and the CDC. AJ Smith, Partner at Outlander VC, noted that Claryx makes invisible transmission systems visible, allowing intelligence generation anywhere infection spreads.

What the Numbers Show

The economic argument for Claryx’s platform is driven by the disparity between the cost of prevention and the cost of infection. With hospital operating margins near 2%, the financial impact of even a small number of preventable infections is material. The UPMC study demonstrated a 3.2-fold return on the cost of the surveillance program, excluding the opportunity cost of freed bed-days. This suggests that the primary value proposition is not just clinical safety but significant operational efficiency and margin protection for health systems facing Medicare penalties and fixed-payment pressures.