Ghost AI raises $11M to build Core, a local computer for personal AI agents

The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz. Abstract, Audacious Ventures, Nova and SV Angel also participated. The company's founding team, which includes young entrepreneurs and is led by Javaid, spent the past year developing the device, called Core. Ghost AI positions Core as a 'brain in a box' that does not need a monitor or peripheral devices. Its purpose is to continuously run AI agents that act for its user.

Ghost's founders argue that existing AI agents, which run on cloud servers controlled by large corporations, are fundamentally flawed. They say agents need access to large amounts of user data, including private information, and that this requires trust. In its first post on X, on Oct. 5, 2026, the company said an AI agent with intimate understanding of a user's life should 'not live on infrastructure someone else owns.' Javaid told TechCrunch that the founders decided there must be a market for a powerful, dedicated, locally hosted machine that users can install at home to run agents that manage their digital lives. In that setup, agents can learn about the user, reason over private data and perform tasks without sending information to the cloud.

Core includes an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell graphics processing unit. It has its own software layer, file system and web browser. At launch, it ships with several open-source models, including Alibaba Group Holding's Qwen-3.8, Qwen-3.8-2.7B and Google's Gemma-4-31B. Users can also download additional models from Hugging Face and other model repositories. 'All of the source code, logic, and model weights live on the device, not the services,' Javaid said. 'We build this device to not be dependent on having an outside entity maintaining the service.'

Because Core does not have a screen or a consumer operating system such as Windows or Ubuntu, users access it through a dedicated smartphone and web application. The app serves as a control center, where users can message or speak to their personal agents, give instructions, assign tasks and ask questions. The device can update automatically, with Ghost delivering over-the-air updates when it is connected to the web, similar to how Tesla updates software on its electric vehicles.

Security and privacy are central selling points. Models run locally and user data is stored on the device, and Ghost says the machine is fully encrypted. The user holds the encryption keys, so no third party, including Ghost, can access what is stored on the machine. A firewall monitors all outgoing requests from the user's agent to check for data exfiltration or malicious actions.

Javaid said Core was built with longevity in mind. Because the source code, logic and model weights run on the computer itself, the device would continue to function even if Ghost disappears. The first batch of devices, priced at $3,499 each, has sold out. Ghost is now inviting users to register interest in a second batch. It has not said when it will begin taking more orders, but the first batch sold out within hours and the company now has several million dollars to build more devices.