The 18-year-old founder created Cal AI, a health application for AI, with downloads exceeding 5 million in 8 months

Cal AI was co-founded by 18-year-old Zach Yadegari and its co-founder Henry Langmack. The two have just graduated from high school, but their entrepreneurial story has attracted widespread attention. Cal AI was launched in May last year, with downloads exceeding 5 million times in eight months, user retention rate exceeding 30%, and revenue exceeding US$2 million last month. Although the data has not been independently verified, the app has scored 4.8 stars on both the Apple App Store and Google Play stores, with a total of more than 140,000 reviews.

Cal AI’s core function is to automatically analyze its calories and macronutrient content by taking photos of food. Although similar functions already have competitors such as MyFitnessPal and SnapCalorie, Cal AI's advantage lies in the fact that it is completely built on the era of large-scale image models, using advanced models such as Anthropic, OpenAI and RAG to improve recognition accuracy, and is trained in combination with open source food databases. Founder Yadgarry said that different models perform better when identifying different foods, and the final recognition accuracy rate reaches 90%.

Yadgarry showed his programming talent as early as middle school, founded his first company in the ninth grade and sold it for $100,000 at the age of 16. He then found Cal AI’s entrepreneurial inspiration through Y Combinator video and programmer community on the X platform. Cal AI’s co-founders also include 24-year-old Blake Anderson, who has previously attracted much attention for creating a ChatGPT-based dating advice app.

Cal AI’s idea stems from Yadgarry’s beginning to work out, hoping to “impress the girl.” He and Longmark then moved to San Francisco, moved into the Hacker House, and devoted themselves to product development. Despite the passionate entrepreneurial environment, Yadgarry decided to get a college education rather than become a typical Silicon Valley dropout. Currently, the Cal AI team also includes Chief Operating Officer Jack Castillo (in charge of influencer marketing) and 8 full-time employees, covering positions such as development, design and social media. Cal AI’s success sets an example for young entrepreneurs, demonstrating the value of focus and technical strength.