In an era where “no-code tools” and “AI pair programming” dominate tech conversations, 17-year-old Zach Yadegari represents a refreshing counterpoint to Silicon Valley’s latest trends. As the wunderkind founder of Cal AI, Yadegari has achieved what many seasoned entrepreneurs only dream of—creating a wildly successful app while still completing his A-levels.
From School Corridors to Silicon Valley
Cal AI, a nutritional tracking application that utilises artificial intelligence to identify food and calculate caloric content from photographs, has experienced meteoric growth since its May launch. According to Yadegari, the app has amassed over five million downloads in just eight months and generated more than $2 million in revenue last month alone.
“We’ve built something that genuinely helps people,” Yadegari explains during our virtual interview, his bedroom wall adorned with programming books rather than typical teenage paraphernalia. “Our retention rate exceeds 30%, which tells us users find real value in the app.”
The numbers certainly speak volumes—Cal AI boasts an impressive 4.8-star rating on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, with over 140,000 combined reviews. For a company founded by teenagers still balancing schoolwork with business operations, these achievements stand as a remarkable testament to their technical prowess and entrepreneurial acumen.
Old-School Coding in a Copilot World
While many of today’s young programmers rely heavily on AI-assisted coding tools, Yadegari represents a more traditional approach to software development. He began mastering Python and C# during middle school, well before sophisticated AI coding assistants became commonplace.
“I believe in understanding the fundamental architecture of what I’m building,” Yadegari notes. “Modern tools can accelerate development, but there’s immense value in knowing how to code from first principles.”
This philosophy paid dividends when Yadegari launched his first business in year nine—a website called “Totally Science” that gave students access to unblocked games on school Chromebooks. The cleverly named platform (designed to evade school content filters) sold for £75,000 when Yadegari was just 16.
The Technical Edge in Nutritional Technology
What separates Cal AI from competitors like MyFitnessPal and SnapCalorie is its native integration with cutting-edge large language models. The application leverages both Anthropic and OpenAI technologies, combining them with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to achieve what Yadegari claims is 90% accuracy in food identification.
“Different models excel with different food types,” Yadegari explains. “Our approach combines the strengths of various AI systems with open-source nutritional databases from platforms like GitHub.”
The team has solved complex technical challenges, including the accurate recognition of ingredients from packaged foods and mixed dishes—problems that have historically plagued nutritional tracking applications.
The Hacker House Experience
True to Silicon Valley tradition, Yadegari and co-founder Henry Langmack temporarily relocated to San Francisco, living in a “hacker house” while developing their prototype. There, they connected with Blake Anderson, now 24, who became another Cal AI co-founder after gaining recognition for creating ChatGPT-powered dating advice applications.
“Twenty-four-seven grinding, sleeping on the floor some nights—it was simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating,” Yadegari recalls of the experience. “But it also provided clarity about my future path.”
Breaking from Dropout Culture
Perhaps most surprising for a teenage tech founder experiencing early success is Yadegari’s commitment to higher education. Rather than following the well-trodden path of famous tech dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, Yadegari plans to attend university.
“Being surrounded by people in their late twenties and thirties showed me what life might be like without the university experience,” he reflects. “I realised I wasn’t ready to skip that chapter of my life.”
This decision demonstrates remarkable maturity from someone whose company now employs eight full-time staff spanning development, design, and social media management. The team also includes COO Jake Castillo, 28, who oversees the company’s influential social media marketing strategy.
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The Future of AI-Powered Health Tech**
Cal AI’s success signals a broader trend in health technology: consumers increasingly seek convenient solutions that seamlessly integrate into their daily routines. By simplifying nutritional tracking through AI-powered image recognition, Cal AI eliminates the tedious manual logging that has historically created friction in dietary monitoring applications.
As generative AI models continue to evolve, we can expect even more sophisticated applications in the health and wellness sector. Cal AI stands at the vanguard of this movement, proving that sometimes the most revolutionary ideas come from those who haven’t yet finished their formal education.
For Yadegari and his team, balancing schoolwork with running a multimillion-dollar company presents unique challenges, but their success demonstrates that age need not be a barrier to technological innovation. On the warp-speed freeway of AI applications, these teenage entrepreneurs have carved out a significant niche, proving that sometimes the old-fashioned approach to coding—combined with youthful ambition—creates a potent formula for success.
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Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
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