A 19-year-old techie is making waves in the AI industry. Zach Yadegari, who first sold his startup at the age of 16 for $100000, is now working on a unique hardware business that could essentially cure a common Gen-Z and millennial problem: waking up on time.
Zach’s current startup, called Flow Alarm, is a hardware business that simply builds an alarm clock utility. Unlike your standard alarm clock app on iPhones or Androids, Zach’s version works differently. It’s more than just an alarm app.
There’s a hardware element involved – a device that the company says can be stuck on any surface, anywhere. An alarm app rings at your desired time of the day, but you can’t cancel it easily with a tap – you have to get up and tap your phone on the device to turn off the alarm. The idea is that once you get up to tap the device, you won’t feel like going back to sleep. Hence, even in its promotional video, Flow Alarm states that you should place it far away from your bedroom to make it more useful.
This is just one of the many novel ideas emerging out of Zach’s ventures – it seems commendable for a founder who’s just 19-years-old. But his true genius lies in this very process, i.e., founding a new startup, helping it flourish and then selling it at its peak.
Yadegari, who was also the co-founder and CEO of Cal AI, recently sold his calorie-tracking startup to MyFitnessPal in a deal rumoured to exceed $100 million. This isn’t his first exit either. Just two years prior, at age 16, Yadegari sold his first venture – a gaming website called Totally Science for $100,000.
Yadegari’s journey into technology began almost by accident. At age seven, a coding camp sparked his interest, and he decided to learn on his own, devouring YouTube tutorials and experimenting with code on his own. By the age of twelve, he had built his first app. But his real awakening came from watching “The Social Network,” the film about Mark Zuckerberg‘s rise.
“I watched that movie and thought, I want to do that,” Yadegari later said. The ambition was clear.
His first venture: Totally Science
His first venture, Totally Science, emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. As students returned to remote learning, school networks blocked gaming sites. Yadegari built an “unblocked” gaming website that bypassed firewalls, giving students access to games during class. The site amassed over five million users and earned him thousands annually through Google AdSense for two years.
In January 2024, he sold it to FreezeNova for $100,000. While it was a modest exit, it proved that he could build something people wanted and monetise it.
Cal AI: The $40 million breakthrough
Rather than wasting time, Yadegari reinvested everything into his next idea after passing his senior year of high school at the age of 17. He moved to San Francisco with co-founder Henry Langmack to assemble a team of developers. By May 2024, they launched Cal AI.
The app was simple in concept but technically sophisticated – users took a photo of their food, and the AI estimated calories, macros, and nutritional content. It eliminated the manual logging that made generic fitness apps tedious. The product was an instant hit with fitness enthusiasts. Within months, downloads surged past 15 million, and by late 2025, Cal AI was generating $40 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with a 30-person team.
Soon enough, the app got attention from the industry biggies, and the fundraising and acquisition process unfolded quickly. Multiple fitness and health tech companies approached Yadegari, but MyFitnessPal emerged as the most serious buyer. After nearly a year of negotiations, the deal closed in December 2025. While the final price was undisclosed, industry insiders estimate it exceeded $100 million.
Yadegari, now 19, became one of the youngest founders to ever lead a consumer health tech exit.
Leading the ‘Lamborghini life’
For a 19-year-old youngster, Yadegari’s story seems usual in the way he conducts his lifestyle after tasting success early on. In an interview with Fortune, he once declared that he drives a Lamborghini, lives in Miami with a group of fellow Gen Z millionaire entrepreneurs, and joked on a recent podcast about his “douchebag arc.”
Simultaneously, he’s also candid about his frustrations. At the University of Miami, he enrolled as a freshman after his high school graduation but found the classes unfulfilling. “I’m not gaining much from the classes,” he admitted. After half a semester, he took a gap term and is now weighing whether to quit college entirely to pursue his next venture.
Yadegari, however, isn’t idle. Within a month of launching his third company – Flow Alarm – he hit $300,000 in monthly recurring revenue.
The startup combines his interest in solving personal problems, specifically morning doomscrolling, with the same rapid-scaling approach that made Cal AI successful. Flow is positioned as a brand offering a suite of products geared toward productivity and improving people’s health. It blends physical technology with software in the same way Cal AI blended AI with mobile apps. Yadegari assembled the new team in the months following the Cal AI acquisition and is still chasing his dream of building a billion-dollar company through this new venture.
Editorial Note: This is an independent profile. Yadegari and their representatives were contacted but did not respond prior to the time of publication. In the absence of direct comment, this article was reported using publicly available records and regulatory filings, where applicable. This content is not sponsored and was produced in accordance with FinancialExpress.com’s editorial guidelines.