Senior smartwatch startup Patronus raises €11M to boost daily use
▼ Summary
– Patronus, a Berlin-based senior safety startup, raised €11 million in funding led by 3TS Capital Partners to expand its emergency smartwatch platform and develop AI companion features.
– The company was founded in 2021 by Ben Staudt and Tim Wagner, and has previously raised around €33 million across seed and Series A rounds.
– Patronus’ smartwatch addresses low wear rates of traditional emergency buttons by looking like a normal watch, resulting in an 85% daily wear rate among its 25,000 users.
– The platform has handled over 500,000 emergency calls and connects 50,000 family members via a companion app that provides location and wear status.
– New funding will be used to expand into additional European markets and build an AI companion for the watch to combat loneliness in older adults when family is unavailable.
Berlin-based senior safety startup Patronus has secured €11 million in new funding to scale its emergency smartwatch platform and introduce an AI-powered companion designed to combat loneliness among older adults.
The investment round was led by 3TS Capital Partners, with additional backing from Grazia Equity and existing supporters including Singular, Burda Principal Investments, Adjacent, NAP, and UVC Partners. Founded in 2021 by Ben Staudt and Tim Wagner, Patronus has now raised roughly €33 million in total, following a €6 million seed round and a record-breaking €27 million Series A in October 2022 , the largest ever in European elderly care.
The company’s founding story is rooted in a simple but powerful observation. Staudt’s grandmother owned a traditional emergency call button, but it sat unused on her bedside table. She called it “bedside decoration”: too bulky, too stigmatizing, too much of an admission that help was needed. Before launch, Staudt and his team consulted over a thousand potential customers. The feedback was consistent: the problem was not technical, but a matter of dignity.
Traditional alarm buttons have changed little in decades. Around 1.2 million people use them in Germany alone, yet studies show only 14% wear them consistently. Patronus addresses this by designing a smartwatch that looks like an ordinary wristwatch , available in various colors, tells the time, and does not broadcast “I need help” to everyone in sight.
The results speak for themselves. The platform now serves 25,000 users with an 85% daily wear rate, far exceeding the industry standard. Patronus has handled over 500,000 emergency calls for those users. Meanwhile, 50,000 family members are connected through the companion app, which shows whether the watch is being worn, if the user has left the house, and provides location data in an emergency.
The product is distributed through a partnership with Deutsche Telekom, which supplies the connectivity infrastructure.
The new funding will fuel two main initiatives. First, expanding the core emergency and family connectivity platform into additional European markets. Second, building an AI companion feature for the watch , a digital assistant capable of holding conversations with elderly users during the long hours when no family member is available. The company stresses that this is not a replacement for human connection, but a solution for the hours when no one is present. Loneliness among older adults is a recognized public health challenge with measurable impacts on mortality and cognitive decline, and Patronus is targeting this directly.
The broader market context is stark. Europe’s demographic math is unforgiving: in Germany, two workers retire for every one entering the labor market. Across the EU, the over-65 population will reach 130 million by 2040. The shortage of professional carers is structural and worsening. Technology that enables older adults to live safely and independently at home for longer , reducing the burden on families, hospitals, and residential care facilities , has both commercial appeal and a clear public health rationale.
With 80 employees and 25,000 paying users, Patronus’ €11 million round represents a growth-stage investment in a business with proven unit economics and strong structural tailwinds.
(Source: The Next Web)