MyFitnessPal acquires viral AI calorie-tracking app Cal AI created by teenage developers

After nearly a year of acquisition discussions, MyFitnessPal has officially purchased its fast-rising rival, Cal AI.

Cal AI, the AI-powered calorie-counting startup created by two teenage high school developers, has surged to more than 15 million downloads and more than $30 million in annual revenue in less than two years, MyFitnessPal said.

According to MyFitnessPal CEO Mike Fisher, the seven-person Cal AI team, including co-founder and CEO Zach Yadegari, pictured above, along with a small group of contractors, has been retained by MyFitnessPal.

The Cal AI app will continue operating independently, keeping the same ease-of-use focus that helped it grow: estimating calorie counts from photos of food. One improvement for Cal AI users has already taken place since the acquisition closed in December. The app is now connected to MyFitnessPal's nutrition database, which includes 20 million foods, 68,500 brands, and meals from more than 380 restaurant chains.

The companies did not disclose financial terms, although Fisher said the Cal AI team was pleased with the offer and noted they were not under pressure to sell. Given the company's $30 million in annual revenue, it is reasonable to assume the deal delivered a strong outcome for co-founders Yadegari and his high school friend, Henry Langmack, both now 19.

Fisher said getting the transaction completed required real persistence. He explained that MyFitnessPal began paying attention to Cal AI as it started climbing the app store rankings, something the company could track through tools such as Sensor Tower.

“We watched the entire competitor suite,” Fish said, adding that this includes around 70 competitors of various sizes. “They "definitely caught our eye, I would say, early last year, and we have been talking to them ever since, on and off.”

What" convinced Fisher and his team to continue pursuing the acquisition was not only Cal AI’s ranking in the app download charts — where the two companies now sit close together at the top of their category on Sensor Tower — but also the team's focus, led by its young CEO.

“They got a lot of media attention because they’re young, and it’s too dismissive,” he said. “You h"ve a conversation with them, like I did late spring last year, and you walk away saying this is an impressive young man.”

As an example, Fisher pointed to Cal AI’s rAI'sar stand-up meeting, which takes place on Sunday night. Because the founders are still in school, Yadegari spends his weekends working on the startup, and his team is committed enough to join him on Sundays for a weekly check-in.

“So it's small details like that, that when you put them together, you say, this is someone who’s doing this as a hobby,” Fish said. “They’"They'rey serious about it.”

Fish declined to specify how long the founders and team are expected to remain with MyFitnessPal after the acquisition. A four-year retention period is often considered standard in the industry and is frequently linked to payout structures, but Fisher declined to comment on it, even when asked directly.

What is known is that Yadegari is still leading the app, now as part of MyFitnessPal, while also attending college. The young founder went viral on X last year after revealing that, despite having a 4.0 GPA and building a successful company, he was rejected by 15 of the 18 top colleges he applied to.

He said at the time that he had not originally planned to attend college and instead wanted to focus fully on his company. But after spending a summer at a hacker house surrounded by the kind of classic Silicon Valley college dropouts who had built successful careers, he came to believe that his long-term options would still be stronger with a college degree.

Fisher said MyFitnessPal has no immediate plans to fold Cal AI into its main product, such as replacing MyFitnessPal's photo meal-scan feature, nor to steer Cal AI users away from the standalone app. In his view, the two products serve different user segments.

Cal AI is aimed at people who value speed over precision. MyFitnessPal, on the other hand, is designed for users who want the opposite. “We bo"h do meal scan, right? So, take a picture of your meal, we both do it,” Fish"r said. But if a MyFitnessPal user takes a picture of a hamburger, they can fine-tune the entry by choosing three pickles instead of two. With Cal AI, “We realised that there is an audience of people who want it fast, they want AI-based. They want it not to interfere with their life and not have to think about it much.”