FundraiseOct 5, 2026, 19:29 UTC

Ghost raises $11M for US$2.26K computer built for personal AI

What's the deal? Ghost, a startup founded by 19-year-old Zain Javaid, has raised an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Abstract, Audacious Ventures, SV Angel, and Nova also joined. The company emerged from stealth this month after a year of building.

What's the endgame? Ghost wants to centralise a person's data — desktop files, apps, and smart home devices — into one piece of hardware that runs AI agents continuously. Its first product, Core, is a screenless "brain box" users access through a phone or app.

The product: Core costs $3,499 and ships in the last week of October, with pre-orders open now. It packs an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU bundled into the price, plus its own browser and filing system. Three models come preinstalled, and users can add others from Hugging Face or load their own.

Why now? Javaid, a former quant, said he felt "fundamentally excited in a way that I never had been before" when ChatGPT launched in 2022. His founding team includes Nicholas Chua, 19, Yifei Chen, 24, and Gautam Sharda, 23.

Asked how Core differs from a Mac Mini running AI tools, Javaid said his device was built specifically for AI agents, with models already installed. Over-the-air updates push new models "similar to how Tesla works," he said.

What could go wrong? Running AI agents that act on a user's behalf raises security questions. Ghost says models and personal memory run locally, with data encrypted so no third party — including Ghost — can access it. A firewall "monitors every outgoing network request" and flags any agent action that exfiltrates data it shouldn't.

The signal: Ghost is betting that privacy-conscious users will pay a premium to own their AI outright rather than rent it from the cloud. "The user owns all of it," Javaid said. "Once you buy the hardware, everything is stored, run, and processed on the device."