At just 18 years old, Cal AI founder Zach Yadegari has achieved impressive success in the tech world. The app, launched in May, has generated over 5 million downloads and boasts a customer retention rate of over 30%. Yadegari claims that the app’s accuracy is due to its use of large image models from Anthropic and OpenAI.
The concept behind Cal AI is simple: users take a picture of their food and the app logs calories and macros. While not a new idea, Cal AI’s advantage lies in its training on open-source databases and its unique model selection approach, which Yadegari claims allows for better performance with different foods.
Yadegari, who also ran his first business at 16, has been mastering programming since middle school. He built his first company, “Totally Science,” to provide access to unblocked games during quarantine. After selling it for $100,000, he and co-founder Henry Langmack began building Cal AI.
The two founders lived in a hacker house in San Francisco while working on the prototype and later brought in co-founders Blake Anderson and Jake Castillo. Despite being surrounded by experienced coders, Yadegari found himself drawn to the idea of going to college, realizing that life as a “classic Silicon Valley dropout” wasn’t for him.
Today, Cal AI boasts 4.8-star ratings on both Apple App Store and Google Play, with over 1 million downloads each. With eight full-time employees, including COO Jake Castillo, the company continues to grow under Yadegari’s guidance.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/16/photo-calorie-app-cal-ai-downloaded-over-a-million-times-was-built-by-two-teenagers