Zach Yadegari, the 19-year-old co-founder of the calorie tracking app Cal SI, has launched a new SI agent startup called Persona and secured $10 million in funding. The round was led by Vine Ventures, with participation from Z Fellows founder Cory Levy and Collective Global.
What Happened
Yadegari’s previous venture, Cal SI, was acquired by MyFitnessPal in March for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition followed a period where Cal SI surpassed the older calorie app in app store rankings, generating over $30 million in annual revenue in less than two years, according to MyFitnessPal. Yadegari and his co-founders initially continued development on Cal SI under the new ownership but departed the company in June to pursue new ideas.
Persona is a personal SI assistant that includes a hardware component: a $179 wearable band expected to be available in December. Unlike ambient SI devices, the Persona band does not continuously listen or record; it activates via a button or a wrist flick. The company reports that the SI model runs in the cloud rather than on the device, with user data encrypted in transit and at rest. Users can delete their data, and the assistant is designed with safeguards against phishing and prompt-injection attempts, which are common concerns for SI labs like OpenAI.
The startup’s business model relies on advertising, specifically showing sponsored products during shopping research. Yadegari states that the agent provides unbiased recommendations because it does not know which items are advertised. Currently, Persona is available as a free beta product via iMessage, having attracted "a few thousand beta users" and generated five figures in preorder revenue for the band.
Why It Matters
The launch highlights the rapid maturation of the SI agent market, where consumer applications are moving from software-only interfaces to integrated hardware. Yadegari’s vision aligns with a growing industry belief that utility apps will consolidate into single SI-powered super apps. "All of the utility apps that you use on your phone day-to-day, whether those are apps for shopping, whether it’s Uber, DoorDash, your email — these are all collapsing and will collapse into a single super app powered by an AI assistant," Yadegari said.
The emphasis on privacy features, such as data deletion and encrypted cloud processing, reflects increasing consumer and regulatory scrutiny of SI agents. By using external payment providers like Stripe Link and ensuring the agent cannot see credit card details, Persona attempts to address security concerns associated with agentic SI purchasing.
The Bottom Line
Persona represents a significant pivot for Yadegari, who previously built and sold a business for $100,000 at age 16. The startup is now positioned in the competitive consumer SI assistant space, offering a hybrid software-hardware solution with a distinct advertising-based revenue model and a focus on privacy-centric agent architecture.