SF Tech Week by a16z · Stanford · October 10, 2026

Care at a Distance

AI, sensors, robotics & the future of aging — the first gathering of the Care at a Distance community.

Hosts: Xiaojing Xing · Crane Huang · SF Tech Week by a16z

Credits sponsored by Lovable · Community partners: CANOPY and AgeTech SF

Care at a Distance opening title slide, SF Tech Week at Stanford, October 10, 2026 — The opening slide from our first community gathering, hosted at Stanford during SF Tech Week.

Why we gathered

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.” And you hang up not quite sure. Living far apart is normal family life now — and the signals that matter rarely come through on a phone call.

63M

Americans are family caregivers today — about 1 in 4 adults, up nearly 50% in a decade

1 in 10

caregivers live an hour or more away — roughly 6 million people caring from a distance

3–6×

higher demand than actual use across caregiving technologies — the gap is adoption, not demand

45%

of adults 50+ use or want AI health monitoring, yet only 13% use it today

Older adults are already connected — 90% own a smartphone and own seven devices on average. The channel to reach our parents already exists. The question is what we build on it.

The day’s question

How can AI, sensors and robotics help us care from a distance, early enough to matter, without making the people we love feel watched?

Human-centered is a design constraint we have to meet. Drift starts years before anyone notices, and it’s rarely caught outside a lab — what’s been missing is a space where researchers, builders, and families actually talk to each other.

The program

Panel 1 · Sensing wellbeing from a distance

Can sensing catch quiet drift, not just falls? Moderated by Crane Huang.

Ehsan Adeli — Asst. Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Director, STAI Lab, Stanford
Jingwen Xiang — Head of Operations, Luffu
Tian Lan — Founder & CEO, Care Mojo
Ziv Lautman — Co-founder & CEO, Greenlue

Short talk · Insights from the elder care ecosystem

From Detection to Action: Designing Technology Into the Care System.

Duanni Hurd — Founder, Aging by Design™ · Founder & CEO, Starlight Caregivers

Panel 2 · Robotics for independent living

Moderated by Xiaojing Xing.

Michelle Baldonado — Stanford Robotics Center (SOAR)
Nan Li — Co-founder, Nurox Robotics
Tom Wang — Founder & CEO, Intuitive Autonomy
Chris (Xiaochen) Liu — Co-founder & CTO, DeepReach.AI

From the room

A full room of attendees at the Care at a Distance gathering at Stanford — A full house for the community’s first gathering.

Crane Huang moderating a panel at the Care at a Distance event — Moderating the panel on robotics for independent living.

Panelists in discussion at the Care at a Distance SF Tech Week event — Panel 1 in discussion — researchers, builders, and families in the same room.

Care at a Distance is an ongoing conversation, not a one-off event. The opening slides draw on our MCiM practicum research, Botha-Chan fellowship interviews, and our Avenidas community talk — statistics cited are from AARP & NAC, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025 and the U.S. Health and Retirement Study.