Stress isn’t just bad for you — it’s also bad for your employer. Factoring in absenteeism, diminished productivity, turnover, medical costs, and accidents, the non-profit American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses over $300 billion annually.
One way to measure stress is by monitoring cortisol levels. Even influencers know this, with “cortisol face” becoming a trending TikTok topic. But to approach things scientifically, the hormone needs to be measured throughout the day, because it’s variation that matters the most.
“By the end of the day, we should have the lowest levels,” says Nutrix CEO Maria Hahn. Her company’s newly unveiled hardware, CortiSense, which measures cortisol in saliva, recently won the CES Innovation Award 2025 in the Digital Health category.
Providing patients with a device instead of having them go to a clinic isn’t just more convenient; it also allows for tracking cortisol levels right after waking up, Hahn told TechCrunch.
Developed with the support of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, CortiSense integrates with Nutrix’s digital health platform, gSense, which includes a digital health platform, continuous glucose monitoring, AI-powered dietary management, and telemedicine.
This also connects with Nutrix’s initial focus: diabetes. While it pivoted its hardware roadmap towards CortiSense, the company’s eye is still on chronic diseases. “Cortisol is a hormone that controls many other hormones, so it plays an important role in mental health, but also metabolic health,” the Switzerland-based entrepreneur said.
This vision helped Nutrix gain support from Swiss innovation agency, Innosuisse, as well as private investment. The startup raised $4 million to date, including a previously unannounced $2.5 million seed round co-led by Polish impact fund Simpact and Japan deep tech fund OIST-Lifetime Ventures. Mayo Clinic also came on-board, after meeting the team at CES 2024.
The startup is seeking to raise a large Series A round to fund its expansion, but its seed round has already kicked off the U.S. launch of CortiSense. With support from the Mayo Clinic, it is planning to open offices in Silicon Valley.
Nutrix isn’t new to market expansion; its gSense platform is integrated with the public insurance system in Chile, a country where it received support from public program, Start-Up Chile. In 2024, the Swiss health tech startup also launched operations in Mexico and Peru.
What’s new for Nutrix, however, is the pushback over a model that targets corporations, rather than consumers. While less common in the U.S., in countries such as Chile, Mexico, and Peru, health screenings are part of an employers’ obligation to strive for employee wellness, with an understanding that private health data remains private.
With the U.S. now at the top of Nutrix’s CortiSense roadmap, Hahn will have to get used to clarifying “the company will only get the aggregated data.” And while a utilitarian pitch around the economic costs of job stress may seem distasteful to some, it may also serve as a reminder to employers that mental health is, indeed, health.
Cortisol is, “also extremely important in women’s health, especially in the perimenopause and menopause, but it’s also a space that was very abandoned from the research and studies point of view,” Hahn said. She now plans to use some of Nutrix’s funding to conduct further investigations into these ties. “For me as a woman, that’s also very important,” she said.
