Costin Tuculescu, the founder and CEO of U.S. AgeTech startup Onscreen, has stated that his goal is to build a global AgeTech company that helps with the care, health management, and daily support of seniors. He noted that while the elderly population is rapidly increasing worldwide, the caregiving resources are struggling to keep up with the demographic shift.
Headquartered in California, Onscreen has gained national attention in the U.S. after winning an award at last year’s AARP AgeTech competition. The company has secured investments from prominent angel investor TCA Venture Group and venture capital (VC) firm Pasadena Angels as word-of-mouth spread about Onscreen’s technology.
Onscreen provides a program called Onscreen Family Senior Care, which uses a TV-based AI system to care for the elderly. Through the program, family members can install the Onscreen app and connect a simple device to a TV, allowing for various forms of communication with the senior through the television automatically. Onscreen has also introduced Joy, an AI companion that helps soothe the emotional loneliness of seniors. Tuculescu relayed that many people use the service for parents suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or cognitive decline and that he finds fulfillment as the company’s philosophy is to help those in need.
The founding idea for Onscreen was sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic. While everyone else started to use laptops and tablets for video calls during the pandemic, Tuculescu explained that he wanted to chat with family and friends on a large 65-inch TV from his living room sofa. An early version of this idea was launched as a service on Amazon. Tuculescu recalled that early users were very enthusiastic and that the company received many requests to make the product simpler. He stated that this led them to develop a fully automatic TV video call function requiring no action from the senior, which he claims is a first in the industry.
Since then, Onscreen has identified additional customer needs and has been expanding its functions. Tuculescu explained that they started offering services that display family text messages and photos on the TV for lonely seniors, as well as providing simple lectures targeted at the elderly. In the age of AI, Tuculescu developed and integrated Joy, Onscreen’s own AI companion, into its products. Joy tells jokes to seniors, gives them quizzes, answers questions, and even draws pictures with them. Tuculescu shared an anecdote that one elderly customer expressed the highest praise for Joy, calling it a gift from God.
Onscreen’s current goal is to make the AI companion Joy, integrated into TVs and tablets, smarter to meet the various needs of seniors. Tuculescu announced that they will soon launch Joy Calls, a service where Joy will proactively make calls, including to landlines, to check in and chat with seniors. He expressed confidence that Joy will serve as a phone companion for the elderly, reducing the caregiving burden on families and providing emotional stability, even for those without internet or smart devices.
