Ghost raises $11M for $3,499 personal AI computer
Original: At 19, founder raises $11 million for Ghost, maker of a $3,499 computer for personal AI
Why This Matters
Dedicated local-AI hardware is a fast-emerging category, and a16z backing signals serious VC conviction.
19-year-old Zain Javaid's startup Ghost raised an $11M seed round led by a16z to ship Core, a $3,499 screenless AI-agent PC with an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU. Pre-orders open Oct. 5; shipping starts late October.
Ghost emerged from a year of stealth Monday, announcing an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Abstract, Audacious Ventures, SV Angel, and Nova. The company's first product, Core, is a dedicated personal AI computer — a screenless 'brain box' accessed via phone app or voice — that centralizes a user's desktop data, apps, and smart home devices to run AI agents continuously without constant prompting.
Core ships with an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU bundled into the $3,499 price, plus its own software layer, browser, and file system. Three models come preinstalled: Qwen-3.8-Next, Qwen-3.8-27B, and Gemma-4-31B. Users can also sideload models from Hugging Face or bring their own. Ghost plans to push over-the-air model updates, Tesla-style.
Founder and CEO Javaid, 19, started Ghost after ChatGPT sparked what he called a level of excitement he'd never felt before. His co-founders are Nicholas Chua (19), Yifei Chen (24), and Gautam Sharda (23). When asked how Core differs from a Mac Mini configured for AI, Javaid argues the hardware and software stack were purpose-built for agent workloads, not retrofitted from a general-purpose machine.