Investors are becoming increasingly interested in AI tools that don’t just generate insights or recommendations, but actually autonomously carry out tasks to offload work from busy healthcare staff.
On Thursday, a startup selling this type of AI system picked up some seed funding — Shyld AI announced a $13.4 million funding round led by Aulis Capital. The Silicon Valley-based company, founded in 2022, makes AI-enabled devices that are installed in hospital rooms to monitor activity and automatically trigger UV disinfection after people leave a space or touch high-contact surfaces.
The system tracks movement within the room, determines when disinfection is needed and then delivers targeted UV exposure designed to neutralize pathogens like C. diff and E. coli. It also continuously documents cleaning activity and UV coverage so that hospitals have visibility into when and where disinfection has occurred.
A Stanford University study published this year in the American Journal of Infection Control found Shyld’s technology effective at eliminating pathogens including C. diff,, E. coli, MRSA, Staph and Candida auris. It said the system decreased contamination by 93% compared to a control room.
Shyld CEO Mo Noshad, who co-founded the company with his brother Morteza, highlighted the speed of the system, saying some pathogens can be inactivated in as little as 32 seconds.
He said the platform is currently being used in more than 30 hospitals. To him, the company’s value proposition is that it decreases providers’ reliance on labor-intensive workflows and reduces the risk of hospital-acquired infections.
Noshad said his interest in hospital-acquired infections intensified after a friend died from a post-surgical infection. Through research and conversations with hospitals, he came to the conclusion that existing disinfection methods were too manual to be consistent or operationally efficient.
“With manual, there’s no way for you to monitor if these processes are being done properly. There’s a good chance that people are missing areas or the contact time of the chemicals is not enough. There’s also frequency — with manual, there’s a limit for how many times you can [disinfect] because you depend on labor to go into the room and run those processes,” Noshad explained.
He also noted that it only takes 15 minutes to install Shyld’s devices. They are mounted, plugged in, and then they start collecting data and autonomously disinfecting rooms, Noshad said.
That ease of adoption helps the startup quickly deploy devices that then collect operational data about hospital environments, he pointed out.
He said the company ultimately views disinfection as an entry point into broader hospital operations intelligence. As Shyld’s devices gather more data, they will likely be able to identify issues such as missing supplies, delayed operating room turnover times or excessive room traffic, Noshad stated.
Down the line, he thinks Shyld could use these insights to help hospitals improve efficiency and reduce infection risks even further.
Photo: Fiordaliso, Getty Images
