After selling Cal AI to MyFitnessPal, Zach Yadegari has moved on to a new consumer AI venture. His startup, Persona, has raised $10 million to build a personal assistant that can handle everyday tasks through messages and, eventually, a wearable band.
From calorie tracking to a personal assistant
Yadegari co-founded Cal AI, a calorie tracking app that gained ground in app store rankings. MyFitnessPal acquired it in March for an undisclosed sum. By then, Cal AI had brought in over $30 million in annual revenue in under two years, MyFitnessPal told TechCrunch.
Yadegari and his co-founders initially continued working on Cal AI under its new owner. He left the company in June and started developing his next idea, Persona, with another co-founder who has not yet been announced.
Vine Ventures led Persona’s $10 million funding round. Z Fellows founder Cory Levy and Collective Global also participated. The company is developing a personal AI assistant that can answer questions and emails, take notes, order food or rides, and book travel.
A band that activates when the user chooses
Persona plans to offer a $179 wearable band. The device is expected to be available in December, and an app is in development. For now, people can try Persona in a free beta that works through iMessage text messages. Yadegari said it had attracted “a few thousand beta users”; the band had also generated “five figures in preorder revenue.”
Yadegari says the band differs from devices designed for ambient AI because it will not always listen and record. Users will be able to activate the assistant with a button or set it to activate with a flick of the wrist. That design makes when the assistant starts listening a user-controlled action, according to the company’s description.
The assistant can also be used without the band for now, through the iMessage beta. That gives users a way to interact with Persona while the wearable and app are still in development. The source does not describe the full range of features available in the beta.
Privacy promises and safeguards
Persona says its AI model runs in the company’s cloud rather than on the band, and user data is sent to that cloud. The company says it encrypts data in transit and at rest and lets users delete their data. Yadegari says user conversations will not be sold to advertisers or data brokers.
The startup also says it is building safeguards against phishing and prompt-injection attempts. Yadegari says Persona’s agent cannot see users’ credit-card details, and purchases require user approval. Payment would be handled by external providers such as Stripe Link, which the source describes as Stripe’s secure wallet for agent use.
These are company claims about how the product will work. The source describes the planned protections, but does not provide details about how they will be implemented or independently assessed.
Sponsored shopping is part of the business model
Persona says it will not sell user data to advertisers, but advertising still features in its current business model. During shopping research, the assistant may show advertised products among its results. Yadegari says the agent will not know which items are sponsored and will recommend products according to the user’s preferences.
For example, if someone is researching office chairs, the assistant could present chairs that match their preferences, including some sponsored results. That approach puts the startup’s claims about unbiased recommendations alongside its plan to earn revenue through advertising. How users will be shown which results are sponsored is not explained in the source.
Yadegari’s longer-term ambition is for Persona to become more proactive and to bring tasks now handled by separate phone apps into a single AI assistant. The product’s current beta, forthcoming band, privacy commitments, and advertising model show the different parts of that plan taking shape.