ClearPoint Neuro, Inc. CLPT

The business

ClearPoint makes the hardware, software and disposables that let a neurosurgeon steer a catheter or cannula to a precise spot in the brain inside an MRI scanner. Hospitals buy the navigation systems, then buy single-use kits every case. The second business is the option: most cell and gene therapies aimed at the brain need exactly this kind of delivery, so drug developers design their trials around ClearPoint's platform, and roughly sixty of them are partners today. If a partner's drug is approved, every commercial dose shipped needs ClearPoint disposables and support, written into the way the therapy is administered. That trial-by-trial lock-in is the moat. Last November it bought IRRAS, a Swedish maker of fluid-management catheters, adding a second product line into the same neuro operating rooms.