Zach Yadegari, 18, of Roslyn, builds AI-based calorie tracker worth millions

At 18, Roslyn High senior Zachary Yadegari is more than a high-performing student with a 4.0 GPA. He is also the founder of an artificial intelligence-based app worth multimillions.

The teen co-created the calorie tracking app, Cal AI, which has 3.3 million downloads to date, and a projected annual revenue of $30 million. 

Yadegari, who started building apps in high school, said he was inspired to create the app with his coding friend, Henry Langmack, with the goal to build muscle as part of his workout regimen.

“I started messing around with these AI models and tools,” he said, adding that he and Langmack, 17, a senior at Princeton High School in New Jersey, “saw the potential to build out an app” that uses AI to track calories.

Yadegari is one of several Long Islanders working on their own AI startups as the industry gains increasing support from area universities and the barrier to entry drops ever lower. 

“Just about anyone can jump on this and start playing with it. If you have curiosity and inspiration, an idea, a little bit of entrepreneurship, there’s a lot of kids out there … with big ambitions and this technology allows them to actually do something with those ambitions,” said Derek Hernandez, a senior analyst at market research company PitchBook.

The AI industry has exploded in recent years, with an anticipated global market value of $1.8 trillion by 2030, according to Grand View Research, an India- and U.S.-based market research and consulting company.

Three-quarters of companies surveyed by market analyst Wakefield Research last month are spending at least $1 million annually on AI technology. The survey included 1,000 information technology and business executives from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Japan at companies with a minimum annual revenue of $500 million.

“AI is absolutely reshaping the tech industry. Just about every single company that used to be a [software] company is employing AI, or attempting to employ AI to the best of their ability,” Hernandez said.

The increasing accessibility of AI technology is “creating a vast democratization of opportunities for startups,” prompting incumbent and more traditional companies to work “as fast as they can to try to develop the kinds of products that these startups are producing on their own,” he added, noting that young people — even as young as middle schoolers — have been leading the charge. 

Gen Z’s investment in AI

Gen Z is especially interested in AI technology, with 70% of generative AI users born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to a 2023 survey of 4,000 people from Salesforce, an AI-based customer relations platform.

Generative AI refers to algorithms, like Chat GPT, used to create new content such as images, videos and code, among other things, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Company. 

New York Institute of Technology, which has a campus in Old Westbury, last fall launched a course to teach college students the ins and outs of tech entrepreneurship. The instructors for the class, which limits enrollment to 15 students per semester, work with students to build a prototype and business plan for their startup ideas.

The university also launched a minor in AI this spring that focuses on both technical and applied aspects of the technology.

“Demand has grown so quickly for this course. We expanded it to all of the students within New York Tech, not just engineering students,” said Babak Beheshti, dean of the College of Engineering and Computing Sciences at NYIT.

Some key factors to this demand, he said, include more stories about successful startups circulating on social media; a “strong appeal in the idea of building something from the ground up;” the creativity and flexibility that comes with owning a company; and a lower barrier to entry.

Nowadays, he said, “with very little initial investment, young people can come up with a product whether it is purely software, or software and hardware, and deploy it,” he said.

One graduate of the course, Jaan Malik, has launched an AI-driven app called Kreativio that allows customers to design and ship 3-D prints, a business model he imagines becoming the “Uber of 3D-printing.”

Malik, 22, of West Islip, won a “Shark Tank”-style competition at New York Tech and is competing in a similar statewide competition with a prize that includes more funding for his business, which has turned $30,000 in revenue since launching last year.

“I know some people are scared [AI is] going to take our jobs, but I look at it as trying to enhance your job,” he said.

Lower barrier to entry

Stony Brook University is similarly expanding investment in AI programs, with the launch of a new Technology, AI and Society Department, and a new AI Innovation Institute to explore application of the technology.

Part of the institute includes an effort to encourage startup companies based on faculty research, said Steven Skiena, interim director of the program.

Although the university has been conducting AI research for decades, the technology has recently gained more prominence, especially in the news, he said. “I think any reasonably sensitive student should realize that this is part of their future and they should want to be involved and informed about this.”

Stony Brook graduates Evan Gauer, 24, of Clifton Park, and Jordan Rothstein, 26, of Commack, started experimenting with AI technology in 2019 and launched a conversational AI business called Get Talky — which Gauer described as a “smart voicemail” — for medical and veterinary practices last year.

“The barrier to entry for people looking to build businesses has never been lower than it is today,” Gauer said. “You’re seeing smaller teams build bigger companies quicker.”

The companies creating the foundational AI models that many startups have been using to build their products “are doing their best to throw that technology out the door,” Hernandez of PitchBook said. 

“They’re helping many companies easily access their work, similar to how any person can jump onto Open AI or Chat GPT,” he said. “I would describe AI today as kind of where the internet was in the mid-90s. It’s chaotic and exciting, but the technological solutions that are being delivered are really trying to be delivered everywhere as quickly as possible.”

Students like Yadegari with access to a computer can let their imaginations run wild, he said, by basically layering code over foundational models. 

“The problem is that, because it’s a person in a garage, or just a couple of lines of code over an Open AI model, millions of people could theoretically do this and it creates an extremely crowded market,” he said. 

Nearly one in four new startups in 2024 was an AI company, according to Pitchbook, with AI startups accounting for 22% of venture capital financing that year.

In a December analysis, the company called generative AI a “necessity” for emerging companies, especially as costs for AI plummet. 

“Many non-AI companies can’t raise a dollar today,” PitchBook senior emerging tech analyst Brendan Burke said in the report.

Computer and coding skills

However, all Yadegari needed to get started was a computer and coding skills.

Like many teens, Yadegari grew up playing video games — and he has been coding since he was 7.

When he was 16, he sold a website for $100,000 called “Totally Science” that was built to bypass school firewalls so students could play games. Then he started building apps, coincidentally around the same time the tech industry saw a boom in AI technology.

When building Cal AI, one of several apps he’s created, he said his team “ran a few tests through influencer marketing to assess if it was something that others would also want to use.”

“That was initially how we validated the idea, and then began to scale,” he said.

Yadegari, who is president of his high school’s robotics club and enjoys boxing, said there is no question that AI is the future.

“It’s easier and easier for a curious mind to get started,” he said of the technology, which he plans to continue using to build consumer products.

Co-founder Langmack, who moved to Princeton, New Jersey, in 2019 from New Suffolk on Long Island’s East End, said AI has helped him and Yadegari create and run Cal AI with a relatively small team.

Four people are on the company’s executive team, and the business also employs eight full-time employees between developers, a designer and social media managers, said spokeswoman Tori Byrnes.

Their success has inspired others at his high school to work on their own AI creations, including one student who is trying to build a program that offers stock insights, Langmack said.

“Since AI is making it easier than ever to build things, people can express their creativity by making apps in much easier ways now,” said Langmack, who has two free periods at school dedicated to managing his workload with Cal AI.

Langmack, who graduates at the end of this year, is considering an engineering major at New York University to continue a career in applying the up and coming technology.

Yadegari, who will also graduate this year, is considering a major in philosophy.

The emergence of AI has been “both a technological revolution and a gold rush,” Hernandez said. “It’s being integrated across business lives and daily lives at a really unprecedented rate.”

He said he’s not surprised that Gen Z is “absolutely running” with the technology.

“They’re driven, even through their schooling, to engage this technology. And they’re people that don’t have jobs, don’t have kids, don’t have all these responsibilities, have time on their hands, and it appears that more time has equaled more imagination and invention with this astounding technology.”

Brianne Ledda covers personal finance and affordability for Newsday. She previously covered Southold and Greenport for The Suffolk Times and is a graduate of Stony Brook University.