Zach Yadegari: The Teen Who Created a $30M App at 18 Rejected by Top Universities

Many consider Zachary Yadegari a ‘teck freak,’ a tech prodigy who, at just 18 years old, has created an app worth $30 million. Hailing from Roslyn High School on Long Island, Yadegari’s future is nothing short of brilliant. As the founder and CEO of Cal AI, an artificial intelligence-based calorie-tracking app, he has already made millions. According to Yadegari, all he needed to start his app was a computer and programming skills. ‘Cal AI is an app where you track the calories you eat simply by taking a picture of your food,’ Yadegari told Fox News. The app has over five million downloads so far. Growing up with new technology, Yadegari developed his programming skills as a seven-year-old prodigy. By age 10, he led his classmates in programming, published his first app Speed Soccer at 12, and launched Totally Science at 14, which later sold for a six-figure amount. For Cal AI, his latest creation, it requires a team of 17 employees across four continents and multiple time zones, keeping his family awake, CBS News noted. In an Instagram post, Yadegari demonstrated the app by photographing his sushi meal, which the app calculated at 400 calories and identified its ingredients. With a 90% accuracy rate, the app projects annual revenues of $30 million. Unlike billionaire tech giants like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs, who dropped out of college, Yadegari wants to attend but seems unwelcome. Despite having a 4.0 GPA and scoring 34 on the ACT, he was rejected by all top universities he applied to, including Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale, and others. He believes colleges fail to evaluate entrepreneurial achievements, placing applicants into rigid categories.