Cal AI cofounder Zach Yadegari raises $10M for Persona, an AI assistant with a wearable band

Vine Ventures led the round, with Z Fellows founder Cory Levy and Collective Global participating. Yadegari left MyFitnessPal in June, months after it bought Cal AI. Cal AI had passed $30M in annual revenue in under two years. He is building Persona with a cofounder who has not been named. Persona is a personal AI assistant paired with a $179 wearable band that turns on with a button press or a flick of the wrist. It does not record all the time. Models run in Persona's cloud with encrypted data, users can delete their data, and purchases need the user's approval through payment providers such as Stripe Link. Revenue will come from ads shown during shopping research, which Yadegari says the agent cannot identify. Competitors include Instinct, Meta's Muse and Bee, which Amazon acquired in 2025. The bet is that consumer app distribution skills carry over to hardware-backed agents. For founders, combining an ad model with a privacy pitch is a tension that users and investors will test early.