By Shirley Romig, Chief Operating Officer, Techstars

Most conversations about AI center on what it builds — revenue, efficiency, competitive advantage.

Bark is building something different. It's using AI to protect children.

As a parent, this topic of "when do I give my child a phone" feels existential. 

Bark is a Techstars portfolio company and the leading digital safety platform for families and schools. Their AI monitors texts, emails, and 30+ social media platforms — not to surveil children, but to detect genuine danger before it becomes a crisis. Cyberbullying. Online predators. Self-harm. The signals that parents can't see and platforms won't flag.

The scale of what they're doing is staggering. In 2025 alone, Bark analyzed 11.1 billion digital activities across its family accounts. Over 7 million children are protected through Bark today, across more than 3,600 schools and districts nationwide.

And the data they're surfacing is a wake-up call. Tween engagement with content related to disordered eating has risen 650% since 2021. Predators are migrating to unmonitored platforms, actively evading detection. The internet that our children inhabit today is more complex and more dangerous than most parents realize, and Big Tech is not solving it.

Bark is.

As COO of Techstars, I have the privilege of watching founders build life-changing businesses. Bark is one of those companies. It's not just consumer tech. It's the kind of AI that changes what a parent can do at 2 am when they're worried about their kid but don't know where to look.

If you're a leader thinking about AI only through the lens of productivity, I'd challenge you to think bigger. The most durable applications of this technology will be the ones that are making people safer.

Read Shirley's original post on LinkedIn.

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