Nineteen-year-old founder Zain Javaid started Ghost after losing interest in his previous work as a quantitative analyst and feeling inspired by the 2022 release of ChatGPT. Javaid and his founding team, which includes Nicholas Chua, 19, Yifei Chen, 24, and Gautam Sharda, 23, spent a year building in stealth before announcing an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Additional investors in the round include Abstract, Audacious Ventures, SV Angel, and Nova.
Ghost unveils Core for personal AI
Ghost’s first product is Core, a personal computer priced at $3,499 that is built specifically for AI agents capable of taking actions on a person’s behalf. The device centralizes personal data from desktops, apps, and smart home devices into dedicated hardware that continuously runs AI assistants. Preorders for the first batch open on Monday, and shipping is scheduled for the last week of October.
Core contains an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU included in the device price, eliminating the need to purchase a separate chip. The system features its own software layer, browser, and filing system designed to process tasks continuously without constant prompting. Javaid describes the device as a brain in a box without a screen, accessed through a phone app with voice mode capabilities.
Local processing and security focus
The device comes preinstalled with three models including Qwen-3.8-Next, Qwen-3.8-27B, and Gemma-4-31B, while also supporting models from Hugging Face or user-trained models. Core units are currently built at a San Francisco facility by the team. All personal memory and models run locally with encryption, ensuring third parties and Ghost cannot access the data.
Core includes a firewall designed to monitor outgoing network requests and flag or reject unauthorized actions or data exfiltration by agents. Javaid states that all source code, logic, and model weights live directly on the device rather than external services. The hardware functions independently so that it continues working even if the company shuts down.
Javaid notes that software differentiation matters more than hardware competition from established tech giants. Core pushes out over-the-air updates like a Tesla vehicle to keep models current. The startup team builds the hardware in San Francisco with the goal of delivering a ready-to-use personal AI computer that avoids complex setup processes.
