Start-Up Founded By MIT Grads Finds Investors For New 'Sleep Shirt'
BOSTON (CBS) - NYX Devices Inc., a medical device start-up founded by three recent MIT graduates, expects to close a funding round of less than $1 million from angel investors within weeks, said co-founder Thomas Lipoma.
In late June, the company moved into a 1,000-square-foot office and lab space at 319A Summer St. in South Boston, Lipoma said — an area dubbed the city's Innovation District by officials and business leaders.
The company is seeking to commercialize a new technology for monitoring the quality of sleep, which NYX calls the Somnus Sleep Shirt. The shirt connects to a data recorder, and the person's respiration signal can be analyzed to determine how well a person is sleeping and to test whether life adjustments — such as exercise or cutting coffee drinking — leads to better sleep, Lipoma said.
Lisa van der Pool of the Boston Business Journal reports:
"Right now, to learn about sleep you have to go to a sleep lab. But if the problems show up in your own home, you won't find out," he said. "We think this is a much better classifier than other technologies on the market."
NYX is currently funded with less than $50,000 in seed money, Lipoma said. The company consists of the three co-founders — Lipoma, Pablo Bello and Carson Darling, who all graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June. But NYX is expecting to make hires once the angel round closes, Lipoma said.
The round is expected to mainly include Boston area investors, though two California investors are expected to take part, he said.
