Zach Yadegari sold his calorie-tracking app Cal AI to MyFitnessPal in early 2026 after it reached tens of millions in revenue in under two years. He has since raised $10 million for Persona, a new AI assistant that works through iMessage and a $179 wristband. What makes this even more impressive is that he is currently only 19.
How Did Zach Yadegari Get Here?
Yadegari taught himself to code as a child because he wanted to make his own video games, he says, and his LinkedIn lists Speed Soccer, a game he put on the App Store in 2019.
His first real business was Totally Science, a website that let pupils play games their school network blocked. It reached about 5 million users, mostly through TikToks he made himself. He says it earned roughly $60,000 a year from banner ads (though he once put the figure at $60,000 a month when he spoke to Fortune in 2025). He later sold the company for $100,000.
Next came Grind Clock, an alarm app that woke users with motivational speeches, and then Cal AI in spring 2024, which he co-founded with Henry Langmack while both were still in high school.
College went less smoothly for Yadegari. In April 2025 he posted that 15 of the 18 universities he applied to, including Stanford and MIT, had rejected him. Georgia Tech, the University of Texas and Miami accepted him, and the post went viral. He chose Miami, he says, partly because the city’s mayor texted him after the post and they met. By March 2026 he admitted he had “missed like many classes”, and after the sale he said he needed to drop out and “build a billion-dollar company”.
How Much Money Did Cal AI Make?
Cal AI made about $30m in 2025, he says, and more since. Most published figures come from him, so they are hard to check. MyFitnessPal has confirmed the app reached over $30 million in annual revenue before the sale.
| When | Figure | Who said it |
|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | On track for $30m ARR | Yadegari to TechCrunch, which could not verify it |
| September 2025 | Several million dollars a month | Fortune, from records it reviewed |
| Full year 2025 | $30m in revenue | Yadegari on My First Million |
| January 2026 | $5.7m in one month | Yadegari on My First Million |
| 12 months to March 2026 | $40m in revenue | Yadegari to Inc |
| March 2026 | “broke $50m in ARR” | Yadegari on X, announcing the sale |
| March 2026 | over $30m in annual revenue | MyFitnessPal, to TechCrunch |
| May 2026 | “sold Cal AI while at $40M ARR” | Yadegari on X |
ARR, or annual recurring revenue, usually means a recent month’s takings multiplied by 12. He has not said how he works it out, and he calls January and February peak season. January’s $5.7m multiplied by 12 comes to more than $68m.
How Much Did Cal AI Sell For?
Nobody has said exactly how much Cal AI sold for. “I can’t reveal how much we sold for,” he said on a podcast in March. One of the hosts guessed close to $100m, and Yadegari did not confirm it. His own paid-advice page notes that “many speculate it was in the 9-figures”.
The search for a buyer began in May 2025, he says. First he drew up a list of ten companies and asked contacts for warm introductions. One early offer was worth about a year’s profit, and he turned it down. He began to accept that Cal AI might stay a business he ran for cash, and he looked for a chief executive so he could step away.
The deal grew out of another call. He asked MyFitnessPal’s chief executive, Mike Fisher, for a chat about how its freemium model worked. He says they answered none of his questions and turned the talk to “maybe a partnership”. MyFitnessPal bought all of Cal AI, he confirmed on the podcast. The deal closed in December, but the companies waited until 2 March 2026 to announce it, partly, he says, because January and February are peak season.
Cal AI has been acquired by MyFitnessPal 🚨 Henry and I started Cal AI as 17-year old high school students with one mission: make calorie tracking easier with AI. In just 18 months, we’ve helped millions of people lose millions of pounds. And we broke $50m in ARR along the way.
— Zach Yadegari (@zach_yadegari) March 2, 2026
Cal AI stayed a separate app. MyFitnessPal kept on its seven employees and a small team of contractors, and Yadegari stayed to run it until June 2026. MyFitnessPal itself belongs to the private equity firm Francisco Partners, which bought it from Under Armour in 2020. In April, reports surfaced that Francisco Partners was exploring a sale that could value MyFitnessPal at over $1 billion.
How Did Cal AI Grow So Fast?
The company utilized influencers and then paid ads to grow.
Cal AI got large numbers of creators to make TikToks that talked about the app naturally, and that alone took it to about $2m a month, he says. Then growth “plateaued a little bit” until the team learned to run performance ads on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. In January 2026 Cal AI spent about $1m on ads, he says, in a month that brought in $5.7m.
He calls simplicity the most important lesson. “Demonstrate the value of your product in 3 seconds or less in any advertising material,” he posted in May.
Cal AI also paid $500,000 to be featured in a MrBeast video. Yadegari reckons it earned back $350,000 to $400,000 directly, so on direct returns it lost money. He argues the credibility brought in enough later deals to cover the rest. TechCrunch then booked him to talk about viral growth at its Disrupt conference in San Francisco in October 2026.
What Is Persona?
Persona is an AI assistant that runs errands for you, with a wristband to talk to it. You flick your wrist or hold a button and ask it to book a table or chase a refund. Persona’s site lists the band at an early-bird $179 (list price $219), with no subscription and shipping in December. A free version already works through iMessage, and it has signed up a few thousand beta users and five figures in preorder revenue.
He launched it on 15 September with a jab at rivals. “Others couldn’t figure out the interface, we did,” he wrote. Nine days later he posted, without explaining, that Persona was “now a 9-figure company”. No valuation has been disclosed.
He said in August he had raised $5 million. In October he raised $10 million, led by Vine Ventures with Z Fellows founder Cory Levy and Collective Global. Some secondary reports also name Whoop and Eight Sleep as backers. Neither says whether the $10 million includes the earlier $5 million. We also found no Form D, the notice US startups usually file with the SEC after selling shares, for either round.
Persona has a second co-founder it has not yet named. “It is the most competitive industry,” he says. He also argues that “this is not winner takes all territory”.
Before Persona came Flow, which he launched in March 2026. It is an alarm clock you switch off by tapping your phone on a dock elsewhere in the home, while its app blocks chosen apps until you do. We found no sales figures for it.
How Do You Contact Zach Yadegari?
People can contact Yadegari through X, where he is most active, at @zach_yadegari. He also recruits there and on LinkedIn. In August he asked engineers to DM him their phone number, their three proudest accomplishments and why he should work with them.
Founders who want advice can book him on Intro at $3,600 for a 15-minute session, or $240 a minute. His listed topics are influencer marketing, paid acquisition, viral growth, product and UX design, AI agent architecture and app store optimisation. When we checked, the profile had a single review. Its bio also claims a new stealth project reached $4 million in annual recurring revenue a month after launch, which we could not check. His LinkedIn headline still says “CEO of Cal AI”.
Author: Akos Szima
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Frequently Asked Questions:
Nobody has disclosed the price, and Yadegari says he cannot reveal it. He says Cal AI made about $30m in revenue in 2025, and MyFitnessPal bought the whole company in a deal that closed in December 2025.
MyFitnessPal, which the private equity firm Francisco Partners has owned since 2020. Cal AI still runs as a separate app.
Persona, an AI assistant that works through iMessage and a $179 wristband. It raised $10m in October 2026, led by Vine Ventures, TechCrunch reported.
It is not public. MyFitnessPal never disclosed what it paid for Cal AI, and his stake is not public either, so any figure online is a guess.
