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

Ghost's first product is Core, a personal computer designed specifically for AI agents that can take actions on a person's behalf. For much of his life, Zain Javaid, 19, wanted to be a quant who uses 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 felt fundamentally excited in a way that I never had been before.” He became interested in personal AI, and that interest led him to start Ghost, which announced Monday that it has emerged from stealth after a year of building, along with an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Other investors in the round include Abstract, Audacious Ventures, SV Angel, and Nova. His 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 that can take actions on a person’s behalf. According to Javaid, the idea is to centralize a person’s data, from what’s on their desktop to apps to smart home devices, into one piece of hardware designed to continuously run AI agents that can act as an assistant, perform tasks, and understand a person’s life. “You can run models on existing hardware, but it’s