The most consequential transformation in global demographics is not a distant future scenario; it is already here. Over the next decade, more than 70 million people in the United States alone will reach age 65 and older. The overwhelming majority—about 90%—want to age at home. Yet the traditional system of caregiving, heavily dependent on human labor, is already strained and increasingly unaffordable.
At CES 2026, the CTA Foundation and NextFifty Initiative spotlighted this tension through a pitch competition featuring startups focused on aging and accessibility. Eight companies presented; three emerged as winners, each addressing a different piece of the aging puzzle: physical rehabilitation at home, intelligent companionship and care coordination, and mobility for people with visual impairment.
Beyond the awards, the event offers a preview of how the longevity economy is being reshaped. The winning companies—Everx, Cairns Health, and .lumen—demonstrate how AI, computer vision, and human-centered design can unlock value in a market that has been historically underfunded and underserved.
Musculoskeletal conditions are among the most common and costly health issues for older adults. Traditional physical therapy requires in-person visits, frequent travel, and intensive scheduling—all major barriers for seniors and their caregivers. Everx, the audience choice winner, is reframing rehabilitation as a personalized, data-driven, at-home experience.
Everx has developed an FDA Class II software medical device that delivers tailored rehabilitation programs through a mobile app. Patients receive personalized exercise protocols prescribed by their physical therapist or physician, perform them at home, and have their progress monitored remotely.
This model addresses three structural challenges: access, quality, and economics. Patients can complete rehab in their own environment, clinicians gain more granular insight into progress than episodic in-person visits allow, and providers are financially incentivized to support at-home recovery.
For senior leaders in health systems, payers, and startups, Everx’s approach highlights several practical moves:
If the aging-at-home challenge were only about clinical care, it might be solvable with more clinicians and better infrastructure. But older adults also face pervasive social isolation, fragmented care coordination, and the rising cost of human caregivers, which can easily exceed $60,000 a year for full-time support.
Cairns Health, the competition’s runner-up, tackles this gap through a purpose-built conversational AI device, powered by “Luna,” designed specifically for older adults living at home. Unlike general-purpose voice assistants and disconnected sensor suites, Cairns integrates conversation, monitoring, and care coordination into a single experience.
The device uses ambient sensing and conversational prompts to maintain daily contact and connect seniors to their care teams. It might ask, “Good morning, Jan, how do you feel today?” or “Have you taken your meds yet?”—simple questions that generate clinically and socially meaningful data.
Cairns Health intentionally works with nonprofits, home-care agencies, and senior communities, recognizing that many families lack the resources for traditional caregiving solutions. That distribution strategy reflects a broader shift: aging-tech innovators must think not only about technology design but also about equity and access.
For executives exploring AI in eldercare, Cairns offers several design principles:
Mobility is foundational to independence, yet many innovations in aging and accessibility overlook it. The grand prize winner, .lumen, confronts a striking paradox: roughly 300 million people worldwide live with visual impairments, yet the primary mobility tools they use—the white cane and the guide dog—have changed little in centuries. Guide dogs, in particular, are powerful but scarce and costly: a single dog’s lifetime cost can reach $200,000, and only about 28,000 are available globally.
.lumen’s response is radical but intuitive: apply self-driving car technology not to vehicles, but to people. The company has developed .lumen glasses, a head-worn device tested as a Class I medical device in Europe, that functions like a digital guide dog.
The glasses are the product of extensive testing: more than 500 blind individuals, tens of thousands of test scenarios, and continuous collaboration with the blind community, including team members with visual impairments. Usability metrics place the product around a system usability score of 90+, significantly above average consumer technology.
Three aspects of .lumen’s journey are instructive for leaders operating in constrained or emerging markets:
Viewed together, these three companies suggest that the most promising innovations for an aging society share common characteristics. They move care from institutions into homes. They minimize hardware friction. They integrate AI in ways that are visible enough to build trust but invisible enough to reduce cognitive load.
For executives, investors, and policymakers, several cross-cutting lessons emerge:
Ultimately, the CES 2026 pitch competition was more than a showcase of clever devices. It was a window into a future in which aging is not framed as a burden to be managed, but as a design opportunity to be met with rigor, empathy, and ambition. Organizations that internalize this mindset—and act on it now—will not only capture value in the growing longevity economy; they will help redefine what it means to grow old with dignity, independence, and connection.