Zach Yadegari, the 19-year-old co-founder of Cal AI, has raised $10 million for Persona, a new company developing a personal AI assistant. Vine Ventures led the round, with Cory Levy and Collective Global among the backers.
Yadegari previously built Cal AI, an app that estimates nutrition information from food photos. MyFitnessPal acquired the company in March 2026 for an undisclosed amount. The new venture is moving beyond a single consumer use case toward an assistant designed to complete a wider range of tasks, including through a wearable device.
The market has seen plenty of attempts to turn AI into a constant companion. A wrist-worn assistant brings different constraints from a phone app: battery life, microphone or sensor performance, privacy, latency and whether the device is useful enough to wear every day. Hardware also requires manufacturing, inventory management and customer support that software-only founders can often avoid.
The $10 million gives Persona room to test that product thesis. Its early challenge will be separating useful automation from features consumers already receive through smartphones, while convincing users to trust an additional device with personal context and permissions.