America's seniors are living longer, but not necessarily better. According to a national study, 1 in 3 older Americans face loneliness and 1 in 4 experience feelings of isolation on a daily basis.

Loneliness is also a chronic problem correlated with significantly increased risk of heart disease, stroke and early death, with a mortality impact similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

One group most at risk for loneliness is also America’s fastest growing age group – there are 58 million seniors (age 65+) in the United States. Over one million seniors live in nursing homes, another 800,000 reside in assisted living facilities and 16 million live at home alone.

Importantly, the impact of senior loneliness or isolation is often felt beyond the individual, with children, loved ones, friends and neighbors desperately working against the feeling and (often) willingly shouldering some burden. At the same time, senior living and medical care facilities across the U.S. face significant shortages of caregivers – both in homes and at professionally managed facilities directly affecting quality of care.

Meela aims to bridge that gap by helping millions of aging Americans and their support networks find connection and the care they need.

A Founder’s Connection

Meela, founded by former Lyft and Microsoft PM and business builder Josh Sach, is delivering what we believe is the first-ever AI companion built for seniors without the need for additional hardware or hard-to-navigate bespoke devices. Josh has product vision and a deep personal connection to Meela’s mission. Josh is no stranger to the aging process as he’s witnessed his aging grandparents, father-in-law, and mother go through changes in their physical and mental health and complex changes in their social circles. He, along with other family members who spent countless hours with the aging, were left feeling helpless as conditions deteriorated and feelings of isolation spiked.

Josh’s front row seat to loved ones’ medical decline and impenetrable loneliness reinforced his commitment to designing the first iteration of Meela (and signing the company’s first customer). While still feeling the pain, Josh saw an opportunity to change the way people age and took the bold step to depart Lyft in favor of pursuing Meela full-time.

This sense of compassion and duty to family extends to the way Josh works with his customers at senior care facilities and the seniors themselves, bringing comfort to everyone he encounters.

“We’re building Meela to be the trusted companion that every senior deserves,” says Josh.

AI on the Line

Every day, every enrolled senior gets a phone call from Meela.

It might sound simple, but a call from Meela feels like a natural chat or catch-up with a friend. Rather than a robotic back and forth, Meela affords seniors an opportunity to use parts of their brain that don’t get activated as often and voice any concerns they’re experiencing to a non-judgmental or hurried listener.

Meela greets each person by name, recalls details from past conversations with the individual and asks thoughtful, personalized questions based on interests. Questions from Meela are designed to evoke positive memories and joy.

It works. The average conversation length with Meela is over ten minutes, and remarkably, 35% of participants spoke with Meela for more than 25 minutes in a single call. In early pilots, Meela achieved over 50% retention at 90 days, meaning more than half of participating residents continued speaking with Meela three months after their first call. On average, seniors rated their experience 4 out of 5, saying Meela helped them feel more connected and less lonely.

These results underscore not just engagement, but sustained emotional value — a rare achievement in senior-focused technology. And for care teams, Meela’s conversational insights surface clinical patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed, enabling earlier, more personalized interventions.

Most importantly, seniors gain companionship and comfort. Support networks gain relief. Communities gain the ability to provide individualized care informed by blending conversation AI tech with clinical best practices and compliance to address health issues before they become chronic problems.

Latest tech to improve quality of life

Of course, Meela is powered by significant shifts in conversational AI. Select insights gleaned during phone conversations between seniors and Meela are then shared with designated staff to provide proactive interventions and improve the quality of individual care, while maintaining privacy sensitivities.

Meela also offers direct clinical value. For example, if a senior is experiencing ongoing concerns – like chest or leg pain – Meela sends real-time alerts that are captured in a HIPAA-compliant dashboard; enrolled staff can then follow-up to learn more and determine the best course of action. These types of alerts provide proactive attention toward concerns that could otherwise be overlooked.

Communities that roll out Meela to patients can visualize member feedback and receive notifications pinpointing areas of focus for community staff or clinicians helping to manage patient care. Meela is used by select early customers including RiverSpring Living which serves over 22,000 people daily across independent living, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing, rehab and home care services.

David V. Pomeranz, president and CEO of RiverSpring Living, sums up Meela’s value to industry practitioners and senior residents, saying “AI cannot replace human connection, but can be an impactful enhancement to our care teams. Meela is transforming how we fight isolation and support emotional well-being.”

Looking Forward to the Next Call

Meela operates in skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), independent living, continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) and assisted living environments and has plans to expand into other arrangements such as memory care and home care. Early results are promising and indicate that Meela is a helpful bridge between human interaction and moments of solitude, reducing anxiety and depression.

The team is growing quickly. Josh is actively adding top technical talent with experience in voice AI and industry experts.

Over the next five years, we believe Meela won’t just scale — but lead a revolution in how the world cares for its aging population. With loneliness now understood as a public health crisis, Meela aims to become the connective tissue between millions of older adults and the emotional support they deserve. By embedding itself within the daily rhythms of senior life – from skilled nursing communities to independent homes – we believe Meela is laying the foundation for a new category of care: AI-powered emotional infrastructure that listens, learns, responds and evolves in real-time to the lived experience of aging.

To realize this vision, Meela is bringing together a rare breed of builders: Engineers who obsess over latency in spoken dialogue as much as they do over warmth and compassion in language models; product thinkers who believe technology can heal; and clinical minds who see AI not as a replacement, but as an amplifier of human care. The future of aging won’t just be about living longer – we believe it will be about creating an experience that’s deeply connected, more dignified and more human than ever before.

“This is more than a company for us at Meela – it’s a mission that we take very seriously as we work toward alleviating a source of tremendous global human suffering,” says Josh.