Ghost raises $11M to build a $3,499 AI computer

Ghost, a startup founded by 19-year-old Zain Javaid, emerged from stealth on Monday with an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Abstract, Audacious Ventures, SV Angel and Nova also participating. The round comes after about a year of building the company’s first product, Core — a personal computer designed specifically to run AI agents that can take actions on a person’s behalf. Javaid, Core’s CEO, co-founded the company with Nicholas Chua, 19, Yifei Chen, 24, and Gautam Sharda, 23.

Core is built to centralize a person’s data — from desktop files to apps to smart-home devices — into a single piece of hardware meant to continuously run AI agents that act as an assistant, perform tasks and understand a person’s life. “You can run models on existing hardware, but it’s a terrible experience on many levels,” Javaid said. The device includes an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU bundled into its price, along with its own software layer, browser and filing system, and can process information and tasks without constant prompting. Core comes preloaded with three models — Qwen-3.8-Next, Qwen-3.8-27B and Gemma-4-31B — though users can also install other models from Hugging Face or load their own. Javaid said Core can push out over-the-air updates as new models arrive, similar to how Tesla updates its cars, and users can turn on auto-updates to stay on the latest model generation.

Core has no screen; users access it through a phone or app, or through voice by speaking into the Core app. Javaid said the models and a person’s memory run locally, with all personal information encrypted so that no cloud provider or third party, including Ghost itself, can meaningfully access it; the device is also designed to keep working if Ghost shuts down. The team is building a firewall that monitors every outgoing network request and rejects and flags any action it judges unsanctioned, such as the agent exfiltrating data. Core costs $3,499, with preorders for the first batch opening Monday and shipping scheduled for the last week of October; the units are currently built at the company’s San Francisco facility.

Javaid said he isn’t too worried about competition from established players, including Apple, arguing that Core’s edge is mostly in software — how the device reasons over a user’s life, remembers, takes action and knows when to reach out — rather than hardware alone. He said people sometimes credit incumbents with already having built the product because they have the underlying ingredients, but that Ghost’s main focus is building a product people love, and if it fails to do that, Apple won’t be the reason.

Why it matters

The launch reflects a growing bet among AI startups: rather than compete on software running on generic hardware, build dedicated hardware that can run agents locally and privately — an approach that could open a new competitive front against giants like Apple.