One of the Inventors of Apple’s Fingerprint Sensor is Now Making Tech Easier for Seniors

AXA Venture Partners and Intel Capital are among investors pouring $12 million in Series B funding into K4Connect. Based in Raleigh, North Carolina, K4Connect aims to make the best new technologies accessible to seniors and people living with disabilities.

By: Lora Kolodny

October 23, 2018

In 2012, “biometric authentication” sounded like science fiction — scan your fingerprint into a mobile phone to unlock it and access your digital wallet.

An entrepreneur named Scott Moody helped take biometrics mainstream. He sold his first company, AuthenTec, to Apple in 2012, enabling features like Touch ID and Apple Pay in iOS devices.

Now Moody is working to ensure that seniors won’t be left behind as new technologies take over the home, whether it’s smart devices or on-demand apps. His new company, K4Connect, brings the latest tech to senior communities, and makes it all easy to operate without the need for expensive IT teams.

“There’s a joke that San Francisco is the premiere assisted living community for millennials,” Moody said, in an interview. “You can sit there and have everything brought to you that you ever may need. We integrate technologies that have been targeted toward a younger demographic and make them work for older adults and people living with disabilities. We’re integrating the best in technology to improve their lives.”

K4Connect’s system employs edge-cloud architecture, which means that even if the Wi-Fi goes out at a given facility, residents can still use their smart ovens, televisions, lights and more. K4Connect is currently used by at least 13,000 residents in senior living communities from Florida to California.

AXA Venture Partners and Intel Capital are among investors who just poured $12 million in Series B funding into K4Connect, bringing the company’s total capital raised to $22 million.

Moody said that his Raleigh, North Carolina-based start-up will use the funding to expand to new senior and assisted living communities. K4Connect is constantly piloting new technologies, he said, including voice-controlled devices. Moody has an eye on autonomous shuttles and robotics that could help seniors and people with disabilities stay as mobile and socially connected as they desire.

“It’s not that older people don’t like tech,” he said. “They just don’t like tech that was made by a 25-year-old, with a large font slapped on it.”

Read more from CNBC, here

 

K4Connect Closes $12 Million Series B Round of Funding Led by AXA Venture Partners

K4Connect’s first product, K4Community, is specifically designed to serve the residents, staff and operators of senior living communities.

 

RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 23, 2018 — K4Connect, a mission-centered technology company that creates solutions that serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities, announced today a $12 million Series B round of funding led by AXA Venture Partners. This latest round brings the funding total to over $22 million and will be used to further develop the Company’s K4Community solution and underlying Fusion platform/OS technologies. K4Connect will also use the proceeds to expand its customer base, which already includes over 13,000 residents across dozens of senior living communities from Florida to California, as well as to accelerate its partnerships across a spectrum of consumer and senior living-specific companies. The funding follows a year of record growth for K4Connect, which tripled its revenues and expanded its team by 40%.

K4Connect’s first product, K4Community, is specifically designed to serve the residents, staff and operators of senior living communities. Integrating the latest in smart home, smart wellness and smart living technologies into a single easy-to-use system, K4Community makes any senior living community a truly Smart Community. K4Community brings together a plethora of advanced device, application and service technologies, making them accessible through both touch and voice technologies. In addition to being a ground-breaking amenity for senior community residents, K4Community also provides community staff and operators with the tools and data to provide the best in care and hospitality, as well as drive a measurable ROI through operational efficiencies and lowered costs.

“We’re honored to have an organization such as AXA Venture Partners lead our latest round of funding. We have been extremely fortunate to have a set of investor advocates who not only wholly support our mission, but also bring significant strategic value,” said F. Scott Moody, Chief Member Advocate, Co-founder and CEO of K4Connect. “Very few companies understand the health and insurance markets, both nationally and globally, as well as AXA. Their support will allow us to not only grow in the United States, but expand internationally as well. We look forward to working with them to expand the market for our first product, K4Community, as well as other planned products.”

Core to K4Connect’s success is its patented Fusion platform/OS, a multi-modal software platform that acts as an enterprise-wide “operating system” that provides a secure and reliable edge-cloud hybrid architecture. Employing an open and modular design, Fusion allows for the integration of virtually any device (home or wellness), service or application into a single cohesive system. In addition to K4Community, future products that will take advantage of the Company’s Fusion technologies include K4Home, designed for older adults living in their own homes, and K4HomeCare, designed for care agencies.  

“The health and well-being of the world’s aging population is a key focus for us,” said Manish Agarwal, a General Partner with AXA Venture Partners. “We’ve looked at a number of impressive technologies designed specifically for older adults over the years, yet K4Connect is the first company we’ve seen that can bring all these disparate technologies together into a single solution, not only for the senior living community operators, but also for the residents and their families. We’re excited about partnering with the K4Connect team, including all their prior investor advocates, to find new ways to bring the Company’s current and future solutions to the one billion people they hope to serve around the world.” 

Joining AXA Venture Partners, the venture fund backed by the world’s second largest financial services company, are Intel Capital, Intel’s strategic investment organization, which led the Series A round, and Sierra Ventures, a premier Silicon Valley-based venture firm, which led K4Connect’s Seed Round of funding. Previous investors that also joined this round include: Stonehenge Growth Equity, Revolution Ventures’ Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Traverse Venture Partners, Better Ventures and RGAX, LLC, a subsidiary of Reinsurance Group of America.

Dr. Agarwal will join K4Connect’s board of directors, working alongside Dr. Ben Yu from Sierra Ventures, Dave Johnsonfrom Intel Capital, Steve Lux from Stonehenge Growth Equity, Terri Novak, the former COO of Kisco Senior Living, and Scott Moody.