19-year-old founder raises $11 million for personal AI computer startup Ghost
Ghost, founded by 19-year-old Zain Javaid, has raised $11 million to build Core, a $3,499 computer dedicated to running personal AI agents. The device is launching out of stealth with pre-orders opening Monday.
Ghost, a startup founded by 19-year-old Zain Javaid, has emerged from stealth after a year of development, announcing an $11 million seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Other backers include Abstract, Audacious Ventures, SV Angel, and Nova. Javaid's co-founders are Nicholas Chua, 19, Yifei Chen, 24, and Gautam Sharda, 23.
Javaid had originally pursued a career in quantitative finance but shifted his focus to personal AI after ChatGPT's 2022 release sparked his interest.
The Core device
Ghost's debut product, called Core, is a computer purpose-built for AI agents capable of acting on a person's behalf. The concept centers on consolidating a user's data — from desktop files to apps and smart home devices — into a single piece of hardware that continuously runs AI agents functioning as a personal assistant.
The device includes an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU, with its cost already factored into the $3,499 price. Core also features its own software layer, browser, and filing system, allowing it to process information and tasks without constant user prompting. Pre-orders open Monday, with shipping planned for the last week of October.
Core has no screen, operating instead through a phone app, including a voice mode accessed via the app rather than the device itself. It comes preloaded with three models — Qwen-3.8-Next, Qwen-3.8-27B, and Gemma-4-31B — and users can install additional models from Hugging Face or load their own trained models.
Javaid contrasts Core with general-purpose computers like Apple's Mac Mini, noting that Core's hardware and software are specifically engineered for AI agents with models already installed. Software updates are pushed over the air, a process he compared to how Tesla updates its vehicles.
According to Javaid, personal data and memory run locally and are encrypted so that neither cloud providers nor Ghost itself can access them meaningfully. The device is designed to keep functioning even if Ghost ceases operations, since the source code, logic, and model weights reside on the hardware itself. The team is also developing a firewall that monitors outgoing network requests and blocks unauthorized actions for user review.
Asked about competition from established tech giants, Javaid said the real differentiator lies in software — how the AI reasons over a person's life, memory, and actions — rather than hardware alone.
