About
Voicari
A Berlin-based PetTech company giving dogs a voice, reading emotion, vitals and behavior in real time, and translating it with scientific precision.
Who
we are
Voicari is a Berlin-based PetTech startup on a mission to change the way humans understand their pets. For thousands of years dogs have lived alongside us, reading our moods with uncanny accuracy. Yet we've never had a reliable way to read theirs back. We think that bond deserves better technology, and we're building exactly that.
Our wearable listens to a dog's vocalisations, posture and vital signs, then translates them into plain-language guidance grounded in affective neuroscience. Not a novelty, not a gimmick. A genuine instrument for care, so an owner sees not just that their dog feels something, but what.
We're a small, ambitious team that moves fast, thinks big, and isn't afraid to do things differently. No corporate layers. No endless meetings. Just sharp people working on something that genuinely matters.
What we do
A million moments, labelled and validated by experts.
We gather canine data responsibly and have it reviewed by veterinary behaviourists and dog-behaviour scientists, so every reading is grounded in expertise, not guesswork.
Research
Emotion recognition in dogs isn't a solved problem, so we started by building the dataset ourselves. Over 1.16 million data points, collected from more than a thousand dogs across dozens of breeds, labeled with the help of behavioral experts rather than guessed at. Before we write a single line of model code, we make sure we actually understand what we're trying to detect.
- Behavioral audio collection and labeling
- Vital sign research (heart rate, respiratory rate)
- Breed-diverse dataset development
- Collaboration with canine-behavior and veterinary advisors
Build
Voicari isn't software bolted onto someone else's hardware. Our team designs the device, the sensors, and the models that turn raw signals into something a dog owner can actually use, all under one roof. That means every tradeoff, from battery life to model accuracy to what data leaves the device, gets made by people who understand the whole system, not just their piece of it.
- In-house hardware and firmware development
- On-device signal processing and privacy filtering
- Emotion and vitals model development
- End-to-end product ownership, from sensor to app
Innovate
Most of what exists in pet tech today is activity tracking with a different logo. We're building something that doesn't have a template yet: a device that reads what a dog is feeling, not just where they are or how far they walked. That means fewer shortcuts, more original research, and a willingness to be wrong before we're right.
- First-of-its-kind emotion recognition for dogs
- Models grounded in affective neuroscience
- Continuous iteration based on real user data, not assumptions
- Building the category, not just a product in it
Care
None of this matters if it doesn't change how someone understands their dog. Every feature we consider gets measured against a simple question: does this actually help an owner notice something they'd have otherwise missed. If the answer's no, it doesn't ship, no matter how impressive it sounds on a slide.
- User-first feature prioritization
- No feature ships without a clear “why this helps” answer
- Ongoing dialogue with early users and their dogs
- A small team that stays close to the people actually using the product
Why we
exist
Dogs have always understood us. We've never really understood them back.
Voicari exists to close that gap, not by replacing intuition, but by giving it evidence. We intervene at the point where a bark, a change in posture, or a shift in heart rate would otherwise go unnoticed, and turn it into something an owner can see and act on.
We're not building a diagnostic device, and we're not trying to replace a vet. We're building the layer that sits between a dog's silence and a human's attention, so nothing that matters gets missed.
How we
work
Voicari operates as a small, senior-led product team. We don't chase every feature idea, and we don't ship things we can't stand behind.
- Every claim we publish is grounded in real data, not marketing language
- We build sensing before we build the story around it
- We treat privacy as a design constraint, not an afterthought
- We move fast without cutting corners on what matters to a dog's wellbeing
Our value lies as much in what we choose not to build as in what we ship.
The team
Voicari is built by a small, multidisciplinary team spanning product, engineering, AI and growth.
Benedikt Langheinrich
Founder & CEO
Paul Hasenbusch
Data Scientist
Mehdi Sassi
Hardware Engineering Intern
Marie
Marketing Intern
Khadijah Gray
Dog Walker
Daniel Kernchen
Dog Trainer & Expert Witness
Suggested Questions
& Answers
Voicari is a Berlin-based PetTech company building an AI-powered smart wearable that reads a dog's emotional state, vital signs, and behavior in real time, and translates it into guidance a dog owner can actually use.