Teen with 4.0 GPA who built the viral Cal AI app was rejected by 15 top universities

Zach Yadegari, the high school teen co-founder of Cal AI, is being hammered with comments on X after he revealed that out of 18 top colleges he applied to, he was rejected by 15. Yadegari says that he got a 4.0 GPA and nailed a 34 score on his ACT (above 31 is considered a top score). His problem, he’s sure — as are tens of thousands of commenters on X — was his essay. As TechCrunch reported last month, Yadegari is the co-founder of the viral AI calorie app Cal AI, which Yadegari says is generating millions in revenue, on a $30 million annual recurring revenue track. While we can’t verify that revenue claim, the app stores do say the app was downloaded over 1 million times and has tens of thousands of positive reviews. Cal AI was actually his second success as well. He sold his previous web gaming company for $100,000, he said. Yadegari hadn’t intended on going to college. He and his co-founder had already spent a summer at a hacker house in San Francisco building their prototype, ... Read full article.