Why Ethereal exists

My grandmother used to call me every Sunday morning. She’d tell the same stories — growing up, meeting my grandfather, the years she almost didn’t make it. I thought I’d heard them a hundred times. I stopped really listening.

She passed on a Tuesday. I would give anything to hear those stories one more time. Not a recording. Not a photo. Her — telling me the story, in her voice, the way she always did.

That moment is why I built Ethereal.

Every year, millions of families lose someone they love. And with them, the stories. The voice. The opinions that only come from a life fully lived. The advice you didn’t know you needed until it was too late to ask for it.

We built Ethereal because grief is universal, and the options available to grieving families — a box of photos, a static video, a chatbot trained on generic data — are not enough. Families deserve something real. Something that feels like them.

Ethereal is not a replacement for a person. Nothing ever will be. But it is a way to keep the most important parts of someone present — their voice, their wisdom, their humor, their love — for the people who need it most.

We are a small team building something we believe matters deeply. We take the trust families place in us seriously. Every decision we make — about privacy, about AI behavior, about how the product feels — comes back to one question: would the person we are preserving feel respected?

We think the answer should always be yes.

— Alan Maran, Founder