TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Cal AI’s Zach Yadegari on how to create viral growth and capitalize on it

What happens when the app you started in high school goes viral?

For Zach Yadegari, the answer was more than 15 million downloads, $30 million in annual revenue, and an acquisition by MyFitnessPal — all before his 20th birthday. Yadegari was just 17 when he co-founded Cal AI, the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered nutrition app that lets users track what they eat by snapping a photo.

But those numbers leave out the part most founders would like to know: How did Cal AI get that kind of viral attention in the first place? And once millions of people showed up, how did the company make the most of that momentum?