At 19, founder raises $11 million for Ghost, maker of $3,499 computer for personal AI

For much of his life, 19-year-old Zain Javaid wanted to be a quant who used math and data to guide his investment decisions. And for a while, he was one. But he got bored. Then, in 2022, ChatGPT was released and he told TechCrunch: “I basically felt excited like I’ve never been before. »

He became interested in personal AI, and that interest led him to launch Ghost, which announced Monday that it had emerged from stealth after a year of construction, as well as an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors in the round include Abstract, Audacious Ventures, SV Angel and Nova. Its founding team includes Nicholas Chua, 19, Yifei Chen, 24, and Gautam Sharda, 23.

Ghost’s first product is Core, a personal computer designed specifically for AI agents capable of acting on a person’s behalf. According to Javaid, the idea is to centralize a person’s data, from what’s on their desktop to smart home apps and devices, into a single piece of hardware designed to continuously run AI agents that can act as an assistant, complete tasks and understand a person’s life. “You can run models on existing hardware, but it’s a terrible experience on many levels,” said Javaid, who is also CEO of Core.

Core includes an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU (a type of chip commonly used to run AI models), Javaid said, adding that the GPU is included in the price of the device, so customers don’t need to purchase one separately. He said it also has its own software layer, browser and file system and can continuously process information and tasks without constant prompting. The core costs $3,499. Pre-orders for the first batch open Monday and shipping is scheduled for the last week of October.

Javaid described Core as a screenless “brain in a box,” which users access through a phone or app. Voice mode is also available, but users must speak into the Core app rather than into the box itself. Core comes with three preinstalled models: Qwen-3.8-Next, Qwen-3.8-27B, and Gemma-4-31B.

Javaid said users can also install other models from Hugging Face, where developers share AI models or upload their own trained models. When asked how Core differs from a Mac Mini, Apple’s small desktop computer that some people configure to run AI tools, Javaid said that Core’s hardware and software were specifically designed to run AI agents, with templates already installed, while the Mac Mini is a general-purpose computer that can be configured for AI.

“As new models or improvements to existing models come out, we can release updates over the air, similar to how Tesla works,” Javaid said of Core, adding that if a new generation of models comes out, the company asks users if they want to switch. “Users can also enable automatic updates so they are always using the latest generation of a given model.”

The team is currently building the units at its San Francisco facility. Javaid said the goal is to sell a fully functional computer that does not require complex installation or configuration. It said that templates and personal memory operate locally and that all personal information is encrypted so that no cloud provider or third party, including Ghost, can meaningfully access it. He also said that users can control how much autonomy they give to their Core Agents and that the device is programmed to continue working if Ghost shuts down.

“All the source code, logic and weighting of the model is on the device, not on the services,” he said. “We are building this device so as not to depend on an outside entity maintaining the service.”

He said the team is also building a firewall to limit how the agent can use their credentials, such as usernames and passwords. The firewall “monitors every outgoing network request to the computer and if it sees the agent performing a sanctioned action or exfiltrating data it shouldn’t, it rejects the request and flags it for review by the user.”

“The user owns everything,” he said of the device, memory and data. “Once the hardware is purchased, everything is stored, executed and processed on the device. »

He said he wasn’t too worried about competition, including from established tech companies. “People sometimes give credit to incumbents for having already built the product because they have the ingredients,” he said. He credited Apple with good hardware and disruption, but said much of what Core aims to solve is software: “The model reasons about your life, how it remembers, how it acts, how it knows when to reach out,” he continued.

Javaid gave an example of how Core is supposed to work: “Core proactively sends you a notification that you might be getting sick because it sees that your resting heart rate is high, sees in your computer history that you were up late working on a project, and has seasonal context that it’s flu season in San Francisco.” »

The company’s main goal is to create a product that people love, he said. “If we don’t succeed, Apple is not the reason for our failure,” he said.

Above, the founding team of Core (LR): Gautam Sharda, 23; Yifei Chen, 24; Zain Javaid, 19; and Nicolas Chua, 19 years old.