The 5 Pet Tech Startups to Watch After PettiChat

PettiChat owned the May press cycle, and deservedly so — 10,000 preorders in two weeks is the kind of commercial validation pet tech has been waiting fifteen years for. But the more interesting bets in the category right now are at companies you haven't read about. That's where most readers should be looking if they want a sense of where this market goes next.

We've spent the last few weeks talking to founders, reading filings, and trying to figure out which of the dozen-plus less-prominent companies actually has a real shot at mattering. Five made the cut. Two of them you may not have heard of at all.

This isn't an investment recommendation — most of these companies are private and not raising from retail investors anyway. It's a "who to watch in the news" list for the next 12-18 months.

1. Traini

The other PettiChat. Yes, you can call them a startup-to-watch even though they've shipped Sentra and have a PettiChat Kickstarter in market.

Founded: 2020, US (San Francisco) Funding to date: ~$8M disclosed across two rounds Why we're watching: Traini is uniquely positioned because they have both the shipped health-monitor product (Sentra) and the LLM-translation product (their PettiChat). If the Kickstarter PettiChat ships and works, they become the most plausible US-domestic competitor to Meng Xiaoyi's Chinese PettiChat. If it doesn't ship on time, the Sentra installed base still gives them a real customer relationship to expand from.

The PettiChat naming conflict is genuinely strange and unresolved as of our most recent piece on the two PettiChats. Either resolution (license deal, lawsuit, market split) would be a major story.

What would break their way: A clean US launch of PettiChat in Q4 2026, smooth Kickstarter delivery, and a clear story about why they're not the Chinese PettiChat.

What could sink them: Kickstarter delivery delays (the usual hardware startup risk), or a name-conflict legal battle with Meng Xiaoyi that drains resources for a year.

2. Companion

The most under-covered company in the category. Companion is a Bay Area startup that's been building an "AI dog trainer" product since 2022. Co-founded by two ex-Google engineers and a former dog trainer.

Founded: 2022, US (Berkeley) Funding to date: Around $15M across seed and Series A (Andreessen Horowitz led) What they're building: A hardware-plus-software training system. The hardware is a treat-dispensing device with embedded cameras and speakers. The software is a computer-vision-and-LLM-driven trainer that watches your dog, prompts behaviors, dispenses treats for correct responses, and adapts the difficulty over time. Currently shipping to a beta list with broader availability in late 2026.

Why this could matter: Pet training is a real, expensive, painful problem for most dog owners. The total addressable market for "actual help training my dog" is probably bigger than the market for "tell me what my dog is feeling." Companion is the most credible AI play on this problem.

Risks: Computer vision in the home environment is harder than it looks. Lighting, occlusion, the dog being out of frame, multiple dogs in the household — these are all real bugs to ship through. Also, AI trainers have been promised for years and nothing has stuck commercially.

3. Petable (formerly PetPace AI)

Israeli company spun out of PetPace, the veterinary-grade health monitor. Petable is the consumer-focused AI layer being built on top of the PetPace data infrastructure.

Founded: PetPace in 2014, Petable AI subsidiary in 2024 Funding to date: PetPace has raised about $25M total; Petable is internally funded What they're building: An AI vet-triage app for dog owners, powered by PetPace's clinical dataset of multi-year continuous health monitoring across thousands of dogs. Pitch: ask the app a question about your dog's health, the LLM has been trained on actual clinical outcomes from instrumented dogs, so it gives better answers than a generic ChatGPT.

Why this could matter: The dataset is genuinely unique. Most consumer health AI is trained on internet medical content. PetPace has actual instrumented health-outcome data on real animals over real timescales. If the product can leverage that without making clinical claims it can't back up, it's the most defensible AI health product in the space.

Risks: Veterinary regulation is loose compared to human medicine, but it's not zero. The line between "decision support" and "practicing veterinary medicine" is exactly where this product is going to live, and the legal exposure is non-trivial.

4. SoundChat (early stage, Toronto)

Almost no one knows about SoundChat. We learned about them through an academic paper on cross-species vocalization analysis where the author was a SoundChat co-founder.

Founded: 2024, Canada (Toronto) Funding to date: Pre-seed (less than $2M) What they're building: An open-research-driven approach to animal-vocalization analysis — focused on building a publicly-available dataset and model rather than a closed consumer product. The company plans to monetize via a developer API that other consumer companies could license. Think "Stripe for pet vocalization analysis."

Why this could matter: PettiChat is a closed system. If a serious developer wanted to build an AI pet collar today, they'd have to build the underlying classifier from scratch. SoundChat is positioning to be the underlying layer everyone licenses. If they succeed, they're more important than any specific consumer product.

Risks: Selling to other startups is hard. The "AWS for X" play is great when it works and brutal when it doesn't — and most "AWS for X" plays don't work. Also, the consumer companies might prefer to build their own classifier rather than be dependent on a third-party API.

We've requested an interview with SoundChat's co-founders. Will update if it happens.

5. Meng Xiaoyi (the Chinese PettiChat company)

We can't write "5 pet tech startups to watch" and leave off Meng Xiaoyi. They're the only one in this list with a 10,000-customer installed base.

Founded: ~2021, China (Hangzhou) Funding to date: Privately held, undisclosed Why we're watching: The data-and-platform play is real (covered in the quiet business model piece) and they have months of head start on US competitors. If they enter the US market — through licensing, partnership, or direct entry — the conversation about "the leading AI pet collar" in the West changes overnight.

What would break their way: US entry in 2026 or 2027, ideally through a partnership with an established US distributor or insurance company. Quality reviews from non-influencer customers after the first wave of deliveries.

What could sink them: A high-profile data scandal (the Chinese app's privacy posture is a known concern — we cover this in the privacy piece). Or a US blocking action similar to what's hit other consumer Chinese tech companies. A trade-war pet-tech-tariff is not currently on the table but is plausible.

The honorable mentions

A few companies that almost made the list:

• PetCube — established camera company, quietly building AI features. Less of a "watch" because we have a clear sense of who they are; they're a competent execution-focused company, but probably not where the breakout product comes from.
• Furbo — same pattern. Strong company, doing the work, unlikely to be the surprise.
• Two stealth-mode Chinese startups working on similar collar+LLM products that we know about but can't name yet. If either ships in 2026, the category gets crowded fast.
• A US health-AI company working on a continuous-monitoring product that we're hearing rumors about. Too early to write about responsibly.
• Loona (the home robot company) — not strictly a pet company but their robots have pet-interaction features. Adjacent but worth tracking.

What we think the next 12 months looks like

A few honest predictions, with our confidence noted:

High confidence: The PettiChat name confusion gets resolved — either through a license deal, a settlement, or one of the two companies dropping the name. (Q4 2026.)

High confidence: At least one major US insurance carrier publicly partners with an AI pet collar company for premium discounts. (2027.)

Medium confidence: Apple ships a pet-specific product, probably in the AirTag family rather than as a collar. (2027 or 2028.)

Medium confidence: One of the two PettiChat products ships meaningfully more units than the other; the loser pivots or dies. (Late 2027.)

Low confidence but high impact: A major scientific finding either supports or destroys the "AI can classify pet emotional states" claim. We're tracking the academic literature carefully. (Could happen any time.)

Low confidence: Meng Xiaoyi enters the US market directly in 2026. We think more likely 2027, possibly through a partnership.

Why we're not picking a "winner"

Almost every "X companies to watch" list ends with "and our top pick is..." We're not doing that, for two reasons.

First, the category is too young. PettiChat's 10K preorders is a real number, but it's a year of marketing cycle ahead of the products actually being in customers' hands long enough to evaluate. We don't know which of these companies will have a Kickstarter-class delivery problem, a data scandal, a regulatory hit, or an unexpected scientific result that changes the conversation.

Second, the companies are playing different games. Companion is a training company; PetPace is a health company; Traini is trying to be everything; Meng Xiaoyi is a data play; SoundChat is infrastructure. Asking which one is "best" is like asking whether a hammer is better than a screwdriver — it depends what you're building.

What we do think: AI pet tech is no longer a vaporware category. There's a real customer base, real product-market fit in spots, and the technology is at the moment where reasonable companies can ship real products. The next two years should be the inflection. We'll be covering it.

Sources

The company details in this article come from:

• Public funding databases (Crunchbase, PitchBook)
• Company-provided documentation and press materials
• 36Kr's coverage of PettiChat / Meng Xiaoyi
• The Underbite's Traini coverage
• Academic publication tracking for the SoundChat team
• Conversations with founders or representatives where available

We've noted where claims are unverified.

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