Zach Yadegari, the teenage co-founder of Cal AI, has established Persona, a new AI agent startup, and successfully secured $10 million in funding. The round was led by Vine Ventures, with participation from Z Fellows founder Cory Levy and Collective Global.
In March, MyFitnessPal acquired Cal AI for an undisclosed amount after the app surged ahead of its older counterpart in the app store rankings. The acquisition was substantial enough to prompt Yadegari and his team to sell the company, generating over $30 million in annual revenue in just two years, as reported by MyFitnessPal to TechCrunch at the time.
Although Yadegari and his co-founders initially joined MyFitnessPal, he departed the company in June to focus on his next venture. He is currently collaborating with an unnamed co-founder to develop this new project, which he began working on immediately after leaving.
This venture, Persona, is a personal AI assistant reminiscent of Instinct or Meta’s Muse, but it features a unique hardware component: a $179 wearable band set to launch soon.
Persona shares similarities with Bee, the wearable AI device Amazon acquired in 2025, yet Yadegari highlights several distinctions. Unlike ambient AI, Persona does not continuously listen or record; instead, the band features a button to activate the assistant or a wrist-flick mechanism.
Privacy is a central design principle for Persona. The AI model operates in the cloud rather than on the device, and user data is transmitted securely. The company encrypts data in transit and at rest, ensuring user conversations remain private and are not sold to advertisers or brokers.
The team has also implemented safeguards to protect the assistant against phishing and prompt-injection attacks, which are common vulnerabilities for AI agents. Additionally, Yadegari assures users that the agent cannot view credit card details; transactions require user approval and utilize external providers like Stripe Link.
While user data is not sold, the startup’s business model incorporates advertising. Yadegari explains that ads will appear during shopping research. However, the agent provides unbiased recommendations because it lacks knowledge of which items are sponsored, ensuring a tailored experience, such as suggesting office chairs based on user preferences.
The wearable bands are expected to be available in December, accompanied by a mobile application. In the interim, Persona is operating as a free beta product accessible via iMessage text messages. It has garnered a few thousand users and has already generated five figures in preorder revenue.
Similar to other consumer AI assistants, Persona can manage food delivery, ride-sharing, note-taking, travel bookings, and email responses. Yadegari envisions a future where daily utility apps converge into a single "super app" powered by an AI assistant. Eventually, he aims to make Persona more proactive, offering assistance before users even recognize a problem and integrating seamlessly into their lives to reduce the need to constantly stare at their devices.
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