For the parent who says "don't fuss, I'm fine" - KINORA is a screen-less, voice-first companion that talks, listens and quietly keeps watch. No camera. No app. Just someone there, in the quiet hours.
A spouse has died. The children live two hours away, or two countries away. The phone rings a little less each year. For hundreds of thousands of older people, the hardest part of the day is its silence.
The systems meant to catch them - families, carers, the state - are already stretched past capacity. And the number of people who need them grows every single year.
older people in the UK are chronically lonely - one in fourteen of everyone over 65.
Age UKchronically lonely over-65s projected in England by 2034 if nothing changes.
Age UK / ONS projectionspeople over 65 in the UK by 2043, up from 13.2 million today.
Centre for Social Justice / ONSSustained loneliness raises the risk of early death on a par with smoking and obesity, and is linked to depression, heart disease, stroke and dementia.
House of Commons Library
Loneliness isn't the absence of people. It's the absence of someone who asks how you slept.
Not commands and menus. KINORA holds a genuine, ongoing conversation - it remembers stories, names and routines, and it is always ready to talk.
"Good morning, Margaret. You were telling me about Daniel's new job - did he ring last night?"
KINORA, over morning tea
KINORA notices when something shifts - a lower mood, a skipped meal, an unusually quiet day - and responds with a check-in, a reminder, or simply a kind word.
"You've been quieter than usual today. Shall we put the radio on, or would you rather talk?"
KINORA, on a grey afternoon
Families get a simple daily reassurance that all is well, can leave voice messages KINORA passes on, and are one word away when Mum wants to talk.
"Sarah left you a message this morning: she'll pop round on Saturday with the children. Shall I remind you on Friday?"
KINORA, passing on the good news
If something seems wrong, KINORA checks in conversationally first - and only then alerts a nominated family member or carer. Help arrives without alarm.
"That sounded like a fall, Margaret. Are you all right? ... I'll stay with you, and I'm letting Daniel know."
KINORA, in the moment it matters
KINORA says good morning, asks how Margaret slept, and reads the headlines while the kettle is on. A quiet start, together.
Assistants wait for commands. KINORA starts the conversation, remembers yesterday, and cares about the answer. Play a real morning check-in to see how it feels.
KINORA · Tuesday, 08:02
Everything intimate is processed on the device itself. Conversations, moments and memories never leave the home - a hardware security module keeps them encrypted, and the radar dock senses presence and falls without a single camera. Tap the numbered points to explore.
The coral Help button reaches a nominated family member or carer instantly - no phone to find, no number to dial.
One companion. Radar docks where the risk lives.
Every KINORA dock carries a 60 GHz mmWave radar. It reads presence, position and movement as reflected radio waves - fine enough to distinguish sitting from lying, walking from falling, stillness from absence. It produces no image of any kind. There is nothing to watch, nothing to record, nothing to leak.
Falls do not happen where the companion happens to sit. So additional radar docks are placed in the rooms and corners where the risk actually lives - the bathroom, the bedside, the hall and stairs. Each is a plain mains-powered disc; together they give KINORA a sense of the whole home, room by room.
When a dock detects a fall or an unusual stillness, nothing beeps and no alarm sounds. KINORA speaks: "That sounded like a fall, Margaret - are you all right?" Only if the answer is wrong, or missing, does it reach the family or a carer. The radar senses; the companion responds; the person stays in charge.
KINORA reaches homes through two compounding channels - the institutions who look after older people in their thousands, and the families who look after them one at a time.
One contract brings KINORA into hundreds of homes at once, through a channel that already carries the trust and the cost of reaching each resident. Incentives align on every side: fewer crises and admissions, lower care costs, wellbeing the provider can evidence.
Direct families also seed institutional demand: the daughter who bought one for her mother asks her mother's housing provider why every resident doesn't have one.
Margaret never touches a screen. Her daughter pairs the device, sets the daily rhythm - check-ins, reminders, quiet hours - and decides the circle of contacts if something seems wrong: family first, a neighbour next, a 24/7 response line behind them. Everything processed on the device; nothing stored in the cloud, ever.
No, and it never will. Presence and falls are sensed by 60 GHz mmWave radar in the docks - reflected radio waves that read position and movement but produce no image of any kind. Camera-never is a founding promise.
It stays in the home. Conversations and memories are processed on the device itself and stored encrypted by a hardware security module. Intimate data is never uploaded, never mined, never sold.
Neither. KINORA has a built-in eSIM, so it works out of the box in homes without broadband - which is precisely where it is needed most. Family members can use a simple companion app, but the person at home needs nothing.
KINORA checks in conversationally first - "Are you all right?" - and escalates to a nominated family member or carer only if needed, or immediately if the Help button is pressed. The person decides who is contacted, and when.
One - the charging dock the companion lives on. For fall detection where it matters most, additional radar docks go in the bathroom, by the bed and in the hallway. They are plain mains-powered discs, placed in a corner and forgotten. Most homes are fully covered with three or four.
Take it out of the box, place it on the dock, and say hello. There is no account to create, no app to install and no password to remember for the person using it.
The opposite. KINORA is built to increase human contact - passing on messages, prompting calls, telling the family when a visit would mean the most. It fills the quiet hours; it does not replace the loud ones.
We are onboarding pilot partners now - housing providers, care organisations and insurers. Get in touch below and we will come back within two working days.
“My mother is 84. She lives alone, three borders away from me. She is bright, proud and independent - and some evenings, the house is simply too quiet. KINORA is the companion I want beside her on the days I cannot be.”
KINORA began as graduate work at the University of Oxford and is now an incorporated venture, KINORA AI Ltd, with patent protection secured. Behind it sit two decades spent building AI and trust into the most heavily regulated systems there are - the discipline a companion for vulnerable people demands.
The hard part of this business is not the technology. It is earning the right to be in someone's home, and to be trusted with their parent. Everything about KINORA is built around that.
Johannes Pfister
Founder, KINORA AI Ltd
We are raising the funding to take KINORA from working prototype to real product - and onboarding the pilot partners, from housing providers to care organisations and insurers, who will bring it into homes.