Fitbit Founders Launch Luffu, an AI App Designed to Help Families Coordinate Care

Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are launching a new AI startup called Luffu, aimed at helping families monitor and coordinate care across multiple relatives. Announced Tuesday, the self-funded company is building what it calls an “intelligent family care system,” starting with an app now in private testing and eventually expanding into hardware.

Luffu is designed to bring together health information that often sits in separate portals, calendars, devices, and documents. The system uses AI mostly in the background to organize details, learn family routines, and flag changes that could matter — such as missed medications, unusual vitals, or shifts in activity and sleep — before they become bigger problems.

Park and Friedman say the idea grew out of their own experience after Fitbit, particularly the challenge of supporting aging parents from a distance without constant check-ins. Their goal, they told Axios, is for Luffu to act more like a quiet guardian than a surveillance tool, with customizable alerts meant to reduce anxiety rather than create it.

Families can log information through voice, text, or photos, with AI automatically extracting and structuring the data. Users can also ask plain-language questions — for example, whether a new meal plan is affecting blood pressure or whether someone gave a pet its medication — and receive tailored answers or charts.

The founders emphasize that users will control what information is shared and with whom, including options around whether data is used to train Luffu’s AI. People can also designate a trusted “Guardian” with full control over care coordination and permissions.

The startup has about 40 employees, many from Google and Fitbit, and is currently onboarding early users through a waitlist for a limited public beta. For Park and Friedman, Luffu represents a shift from individual health tracking toward tools built for the realities of family caregiving — a growing burden for millions of households.

This analysis is based on reporting from Axios.

Image courtesy of Luffu.

This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.