The startup aims to bring phone-first voice AI to millions of older adults aging alone
Delaware, US — July 2, 2026 — Callie Care Inc., an AgeTech startup building a proactive phone-first voice AI that calls seniors daily — helping them fight isolation, manage everyday needs, and stay connected to their families and care teams — has received non-dilutive funding from InterSystems Ventures and closed a $500K pre-seed round backed by angel investors. It addresses one of the most urgent demographic challenges in the U.S. today.
From Personal Experience to a Phone-First AI Companion
With nearly 29% of U.S. older adults living alone, the system around them is not built for it. Professional care is expensive and scarce, assisted living is out of reach for many. Existing technology solutions often fail this audience because of usability barriers. The burden falls back on families – 63M family caregivers, many already under high stress and financial strain.
But Callie Care’s co-founders — Igor Gurovich (co-founder of Refocus), Yury Palevich (ex-VP of Innovations at inDrive), and Michil Androsov (ex-CTO at inDrive) — didn’t arrive at the idea behind the startup through data alone. It emerged from their personal experience: each spent significant time with aging grandparents and saw firsthand how the modern world wasn’t designed for them.
That insight led them to create a voice AI companion that connects with older adults through daily wellness check-in phone calls, requiring no apps, downloads, or active tech navigation. Callie Care initiates daily calls and acts as a hands-on daily assistant, forming an AI layer between older adults and the outside world and helping them manage daily needs through the phone they already use. It books transportation, handles grocery and medication orders, schedules appointments, adapts to their personality, remembers context from previous conversations, provides emotional support, and enables gentle wellness monitoring.
Callie Care also keeps older adults mentally stimulated — introducing new topics, sharing interesting facts and exercises that help maintain curiosity and cognitive resilience. Each interaction is linked to the individual’s health profile, routine, and personal network of family members, doctors, and caregivers.
“Our mission is to ensure no senior feels alone. The debate is usually framed as AI vs. human caregivers. We think that is the wrong question. There are not enough people to care for aging Americans, and no hiring scenario closes the gap. We think this is one of the most under-told threads in US healthcare right now, and that is the gap we built Callie Care for.” says Yury Palevich, co-founder and CEO of Callie Care.
Unlike app-based solutions, Callie Care operates entirely through regular phone calls, eliminating hardware and interface barriers. The system uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to remember past conversations and personalize each interaction, while integrating real-world context such as weather and news to make conversations natural and relevant.
Powered by multiple specialized AI models, it already extracts meaningful health and wellness signals from natural conversations. Family members receive weekly wellness reports with mood tracking and emotional trends, with instant alerts when concerns arise. For care organizations, the platform flags health signals for clinical attention — signs of pain, depression, or cognitive changes — and detects practical needs like shopping, appointments, or home help before seniors ask.
As a part of its long-term strategy, Callie Care is developing passive voice biomarker analysis to detect early signals of cognitive decline from speech patterns. Research shows this approach can achieve 70-90% sensitivity, compared to 30% for traditional screening, potentially identifying changes years before clinical diagnosis. With up to 80% of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and over 40% of dementia cases remaining undiagnosed, and an average 3.5-year diagnostic delay, earlier detection through passive voice monitoring represents a major opportunity for preventive intervention.
Early Traction and Insights
Early results show strong traction: in the B2C segment, over 8,000 users have tried the service since launching its MVP in mid-October 2025, and 85% of engaged users asked to keep receiving regular calls. Average call duration is 10 minutes, with total senior dialogue exceeding 730 hours.
44% of conversations include older adults voluntarily discussing health conditions, medications, or symptoms, enabling extraction of structured health insights and building longitudinal health user profiles. 28% of calls reveal negative emotional states such as sadness, anxiety, or loneliness.
Beyond direct-to-consumer, Callie Care is building enterprise channels across senior care infrastructure. The company has been accepted into the VA Innovation Repository, opening a pathway to serve millions of aging veterans across the United States.
Building Toward a $22B Market
The $500K pre-seed round will be deployed to ship the next version of the product, scale user acquisition, build the technical infrastructure for advanced cognitive monitoring, and establish enterprise sales to home care agencies and senior living communities. In parallel, the non-dilutive grant and strategic support from InterSystems Ventures will be directed towards building a scalable and interoperable infrastructure among health systems.
By the end of 2026, Callie Care plans to scale to thousands of users across B2C and B2B channels, expanding through value-based care providers, home health agencies, and insurance reimbursement pathways. As it grows, the company plans to add more practical functionality and turn Callie Care into a full-featured AI assistant for older adults — helping them with all possible everyday needs. The company is operating in a fast-expanding market: the U.S. population aged 65+ is projected to grow from 61.2 million today to 82 million by 2050. Across B2C, B2B, and insurance reimbursement pathways, the total U.S. addressable market exceeds $22B.
About Callie Care:
Callie Care Inc. is an AgeTech startup building a proactive voice AI assistant for older adults — delivered entirely through the phone they already use. Callie calls seniors daily, knows their health context, routine, and personal network, and handles everything from rides and groceries to medication reminders and wellness check-ins. The platform keeps families informed and care teams alerted, with no apps or hardware required. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in Delaware, Callie Care’s mission is to give older adults independence and free their families’ time for what matters most.
The company’s advisory board includes Julie Brown, PhD (Associate Professor of Gerontology, Ohio University), Israel Cross, PhD, MA (President, National Aging-in-Place Council), and Vadim Cherdak (CTO/Founder of YCare), bringing together expertise in aging-in-place care, public health gerontology, and Medicare infrastructure.
Media Contact:
Ekaterina Voskoboynikova
25/8 PR (on behalf of Callie Care)
Email: [email protected]
