MyFitnessPal acquires AI calorie-counting app Cal AI

MyFitnessPal has acquired Cal AI, a startup that gained significant traction with its AI-based calorie counting technology. The acquisition, which closed in December, brings Cal AI’s seven employees into MyFitnessPal. According to MyFitnessPal CEO Mike Fisher, the acquired app will remain independent, continuing its core mission of estimating calories from food photos. The transaction followed ongoing discussions between the two companies that began on and off after Cal AI caught MyFitnessPal’s attention early last year.

The startup has scaled rapidly since its launch, driven by its photo-based tracking feature. While the app will continue to operate as a separate product, MyFitnessPal has already integrated Cal AI with its own nutrition database. The scale of the two entities includes:

• Cal AI downloads: Over 15 million downloads
• Cal AI annual revenue: Over $30 million
• MyFitnessPal database size: 20 million foods, 68,500 brands, and meals from 380+ restaurant chains

MyFitnessPal first noticed Cal AI rising in the app store rankings through Sensor Tower, an app market intelligence and analytics tool. Fisher noted that MyFitnessPal monitors a competitor suite of some 70 competitors. Despite the young age of Cal AI’s co-founders, 19-year-olds Zach Yadegari and Henry Langmack, Fisher was impressed by their discipline, noting that the team holds weekly stand-up meetings on Sunday nights. Yadegari, who serves as CEO of Cal AI, previously went viral last year on X after revealing he was rejected by 15 of the 18 top colleges he applied to, despite holding a 4.0 GPA. Yadegari initially did not intend to go to college, but decided to enroll after spending a summer at a hacker house—a shared living space for software developers and entrepreneurs—surrounded by Silicon Valley college dropouts.

The acquisition is structured to keep the founders and their team in place. While Fisher declined to specify the exact post-acquisition retention period, a four-year term is a pretty industry-standard term for such deals. Fisher explained that MyFitnessPal has no plans at the moment to integrate the app into its main product or replace its existing photo-meal scan feature, as the two apps target distinct user bases. “We realized that there is an audience of people that want it fast, they want AI based. They want it to not interfere with their life and not have to think about it much,” Fisher said, explaining that Cal AI serves users prioritizing speed, while MyFitnessPal is built for those who want high-precision tracking.

Why it matters

MyFitnessPal is acquiring Cal AI to secure its position against AI-native competitors while maintaining a dual-product strategy that separates speed-focused users from those requiring high-precision nutrition tracking.