MyFitnessPal announced on March 2, 2026 that it had acquired Cal AI, a calorie-tracking app that estimates the nutritional content of a meal from a photo. The deal closed in December 2025 after nearly a year of talks, TechCrunch reported.
Terms were not disclosed. MyFitnessPal chief executive Mike Fisher told TechCrunch only that the Cal AI team had not needed to sell and was happy with the offer.
Cal AI will keep operating as a standalone app. Its seven employees, including co-founder and chief executive Zach Yadegari, and a small group of contractors have been kept on, and Yadegari continues to run the app as a unit of MyFitnessPal while attending college.
What Cal AI built
Yadegari and his high school friend Henry Langmack, both now 19, built Cal AI while still at school. Users take a picture of their food and the app estimates its calories, an approach aimed at people who want logging to be quick. Athletech News reported that the app also includes a body composition feature that estimates body fat percentage from front and side photos.
According to MyFitnessPal, Cal AI passed 15 million downloads and more than $30 million in annual revenue in under two years. In the acquisition announcement, Yadegari put sales for the previous 12 months at more than $40 million. TechCrunch noted that the two apps were close to each other at the top of their category's rankings on Sensor Tower.
Before Cal AI, Yadegari built Totally Science, a gaming website that drew more than 5 million users during the COVID-19 pandemic and which he sold for a six-figure sum, Athletech News reported. No outside funding for Cal AI was disclosed.
Yadegari drew attention online in 2025 when he posted that 15 of the 18 top colleges he applied to had rejected him, despite a 4.0 grade point average and a successful company. He told TechCrunch he had not planned to go to college at all, but changed his mind after a summer at a hacker house in Silicon Valley.
“We built Cal AI in our high school classrooms and grew it to one of the fastest-growing apps in the category, generating over $40 million in sales in the last 12 months. It exceeded all expectations.”
Why MyFitnessPal is buying
MyFitnessPal, founded in 2005, says it serves more than 280 million members in more than 120 countries. It is owned by the private equity firm Francisco Partners. In February 2025 it bought Intent, a meal planning app, and in January 2026 it connected its service to ChatGPT Health.
Fisher told TechCrunch that the company tracks about 70 competitors and first noticed Cal AI early in 2025 as it climbed the app store charts. He met Yadegari in the spring and came away impressed by how seriously the team took the business, pointing to its weekly stand-up meetings held on Sunday nights so the founders could attend around school.
"With Cal AI in our portfolio, we're not just expanding our reach, we're investing in the idea that no single product can serve every consumer," Fisher said in the announcement.
Two apps, two audiences
MyFitnessPal said it has no current plans to fold Cal AI into its main app, to replace its own photo meal-scan feature, or to move Cal AI users over. Fisher said the products serve different markets: Cal AI is for people who prefer speed over precision, while MyFitnessPal users can adjust the details of each meal.
One change has already been made. Since the deal closed, Cal AI has been connected to MyFitnessPal's nutrition database, which covers 20 million foods, 68,500 brands and meals from more than 380 restaurant chains. MyFitnessPal said it will keep investing in Cal AI's product development and marketing.
Fisher said both apps offer meal scanning, but MyFitnessPal lets a user who photographs a hamburger specify details down to the number of pickles. With Cal AI, he said, the company had found an audience that wants tracking to be fast, AI-based and not interfere with daily life.
Fisher declined to say how long the founders and team are required to stay with the company after the acquisition.
