Aging Parents Need Company – and Your Calls Aren't Enough

01 /The Concept

Meela is an AI companion for older adults.

No app installation required. No learning curve. Users simply talk to Meela over a regular phone call – it's a voice AI agent. The only setup: visit the website once, register, enter your phone number, and choose the days and times you'd like Meela to call. Outside those scheduled windows, users can call Meela themselves anytime, day or night.

Meela doesn't just listen – it asks questions. Follow-up clarifications, prompts to elaborate, curiosity about what happened next. It also remembers everything: preferences, mentioned people, events, facts, opinions. Conversations become richer over time as the AI builds context.

Conversation topics fall into three broad categories:

- Daily life. How was your day, what happened, what are you thinking about, how are you feeling, where did you go, what did you eat.

- Interests, memories, and entertainment. Talking about favorite books, films, or music. Playing word games or other voice-friendly games. Revisiting funny or meaningful stories from the past.

- Ideas and advice. Sharing a situation and asking for perspective. Getting a neutral outside take on a decision – from what to do this afternoon to more significant life choices. Asking about something you've always wanted to understand.

More than half of users who start using Meela are still using it three months later – a solid retention rate for any product, let alone a conversational AI. Average call length is 10 minutes, with many running longer.

Beyond individual users, Meela is running a pilot program in assisted living facilities. In that context, the goal isn't to replace human contact – it's to increase it. Meela tracks the facility's activity calendar, so when a resident says something like "I don't know what to do" or "I'm feeling a bit blue," it can suggest joining the bingo game starting in two hours.

A medical director at one facility noted "a statistically confirmed reduction in anxiety and depression among residents after they began using Meela."

The startup launched publicly two months ago after a beta period. Its first outside funding is $3.5M.

02 /Why It Matters

The core problem is loneliness – not the existential kind, but the literal kind. The kind where there's simply nobody to talk to.

In the US, the share of adults living alone more than tripled between 1940 and 2020. Among adults over 65, the percentage living alone has been rising steadily – and with longer lifespans, the absolute numbers are growing fast.

Meela's stated mission isn't just promoting an AI companion but improving quality of life for older adults and their families more broadly, with the companion as the first product in a planned suite.

That framing – improving life for older adults *and their families* – is important.

Everyone knows they should call their parents more. Most adults don't, for a familiar mix of reasons: too busy, not sure what to talk about when lives have diverged so much, no emotional energy for the complaints and the nostalgia, and the quiet guilt of knowing you can't actually fix anything – you can only show up with groceries nobody really needed.

This ambient guilt quietly weighs on adult children too. Would you pay for an AI companion that your elderly parents could talk to whenever they wanted, about whatever they wanted, so they'd feel less alone?

Meela isn't the only player recognizing this opportunity. South Korean company Hyudol is working on the same problem with the same framing – a range of AI services to improve quality of life and health for older adults. Their current product, recently cleared in the US, is a physical AI companion in the form of a small child-like device you can talk to without needing to dial anywhere.

In 2023, Intuition Robotics raised $25M for a voice-and-screen AI companion device aimed at the same demographic.

AI companions are one response to loneliness, but not the only one. Specialized offline-meeting and online-social platforms targeting older adults are another angle. German startup Meet5 ([covered here](/review/druzhba-perspektivnee-chem-seks)) expanded to the US in July and raised €8M to accelerate that push – its membership starts at 40, but average user age is 57.

Platforms with explicit 50+ or 55+ positioning are also emerging: Hank ([covered here](/review/chego-im-ne-hvataet-krome-zdorovja)) raised $8.3M, and Rest Less ([covered here](/review/dlja-teh-komu-za-50)) raised £20.1M – including £11M after its initial coverage.

03 /Opportunities

Two broad directions emerge from this space.

The first is voice AI agents applied across different domains. A [recent review](/review/odna-shema-po-kotoroj-mozhno-sozdat-mnogo-vostrebovannyh-startapov) counted more than a dozen startups building voice AI agents just within the most recent Y Combinator batch – and the number keeps growing. Meela is one compelling vertical application of this technology, even if it's not the most obvious one.

The second is platforms and services for fighting loneliness and improving life quality for older adults more broadly. AI companions are one approach; human connection platforms are another. Within either path, there's room for many distinct niches and product variants.

Which direction looks more promising to you – or which one are you more drawn to?