Sunday, March 16, 2025

How two teenagers built a popular calorie-tracking app

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Image Credits: Getty Images/Mrs

The founders of Cal AI claim that their calorie-tracking app has been downloaded 5 million times in the past eight months — an impressive number that's even more impressive considering the founders are both 18 years old and recently graduated from high school.

The concept is simple: Take a picture of any food you're about to eat and let the app log the calories and macros. But unlike earlier apps with similar ideas, Cal AI has the advantage of launching in the age of large image models.

In fact, founder Zach Yadegari told Julie Bort that "different models do better with different foods."

Keep reading to see what else TechCrunch is covering this weekend.

Weekend news and opinion

Image Credits: Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The best Skype alternatives: Microsoft plans to sunset the once-ubiquitous video-calling service Skype on May 5, so Lauren Forristal runs down the many alternatives. Microsoft would probably like you to move over to Microsoft Teams, and of course there's Zoom … but apparently Signal has video-calling features, too?

How "The Electric State" built its unlikely robots: Reviews have not been kind to the latest Netflix blockbuster from brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, but I had a good time! And if nothing else, it's an impressive technical achievement. I spoke to visual effects supervisor Matthew E. Butler about how his team brought hundreds of unique robots to life on-screen.

"Open" model licenses have strings attached: Kyle Wiggers examines how companies like Google and Meta are using non-standard licensing terms for their openly available AI models. Apparently that's creating concerns that tech giants could "pull the rug" on smaller businesses that use their models.

What else we're reading 📗

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has more details about the fallout around Apple's delay in updating Siri as it tries to keep up with its AI competitors. Specifically, he reports that Apple senior director Robby Walker acknowledged at a Siri team meeting that they might be feeling angry or embarrassed about the delay, but he praised team members for creating "incredibly impressive" features.

Meanwhile, Wired has a profile of Boeing whistleblower Ed Pierson and what he can tell us about the worst seven years in the company's history.