18-year-old Zach Yadegari sells Cal AI to MyFitnessPal after hitting $30M revenue in 2025
Mar 2, 2026 with Zach Yadegari
Key Points
- Cal AI, an AI photo-based calorie tracker, hit $30M revenue in 2025 before MyFitnessPal acquired it in December when founder Zach Yadegari was 18.
- The app runs almost entirely on iOS and grew through influencer marketing early, then paid acquisition via Meta over the final six months.
- MyFitnessPal gains an AI-native growth channel and proven paid social expertise; Cal AI stays standalone post-acquisition and retains its user base.
Summary
Zach Yadegari built Cal AI, a calorie-tracking app that lets users photograph their food, into a $30M revenue business in 2025, then sold it to MyFitnessPal at age 18. January 2026 alone came in at $5.7M, suggesting the run rate was still accelerating at close.
The business is almost entirely iOS. Android accounts for roughly a tenth of revenue. Growth came in two phases: influencer marketing early on, then paid acquisition through Meta over the last six months.
Product development
The original version was ChatGPT with a wrapper that converted photos to calorie counts. That lasted about a month. Yadegari's team then fine-tuned their own model and built a multi-model pipeline, reaching over 90% accuracy per food scan. Only 30% of food logs in the app actually come from photo scanning. The rest use barcodes or manual database entry, which are more accurate by default.
Acquisition
Yadegari first spoke to MyFitnessPal in May when he was exploring a sale before starting college. Nothing happened then, but the relationship held. The deal closed in December 2025 while he was still 18. Cal AI will remain a standalone app post-acquisition, with the two companies sharing marketing systems and product knowledge in both directions.
MyFitnessPal gains a fast-growing, AI-native acquisition channel and a team that has figured out paid social at scale. Yadegari gains distribution, resources, and a balance sheet behind him before his second year of college.