Ghost sells out its first run of a $3,499 personal AI computer
A screenless box that does nothing but run your AI agents sold out its first batch hours after preorders opened — while two much bigger money moves landed overnight, one of them entirely on the companies' own word.
Ghost, a 19-year-old founder's startup, sold out batch one of Core, a $3,499 screenless computer built for one job: running your personal AI agents. The New York company emerged from stealth on Monday with an $11 million seed led by Andreessen Horowitz, alongside Abstract, Audacious Ventures, Nova and SV Angel, and put Core up for preorder the same day — the first batch went in "a matter of hours," with shipping promised for the last week of October. Core bundles an Nvidia RTX Pro 4000 SFF Blackwell GPU, is controlled from a phone or browser, and keeps its source code, logic and model weights on the device rather than in someone's cloud — chief executive Zain Javaid's pitch is that the machine keeps working even if Ghost shuts down. The detail worth watching is the firewall: Core monitors every outgoing request the agent makes and rejects anything that looks like data exfiltration, which is the first time "your agent can't phone home" has been a shipped hardware feature rather than a policy promise. Batch one selling out is a real adoption signal for on-device agent hardware, but it is also a small one — no valuation was disclosed, and preorders shipping late in the month is when the promises meet actual silicon.
SignSplit launched out of stealth with what it says is a $400 million seed round at a $1 billion valuation — to get people paid for the data AI models train on. The Delaware public benefit corporation, founded in 2024 and led by chief executive Alessandro Monterosso, is selling "signed data": human contributions — datasets, likeness, voice — digitally signed to establish provenance, consent and the terms of use, then pooled so AI developers can license them and contributors get paid by usage. The money comes from a single strategic investor, W Group, a group of 11 fintech firms, and the company describes it as a financing commitment rather than wired capital. Caveat worth keeping: the only reporting traces back to press releases — SignSplit's own and a separate W Group statement — no independent outlet has verified the round, and one aggregator's "$10 billion valuation" line contradicts everyone else's numbers. The thesis is not crazy — labs increasingly need training data they can defend in court — but a seed this size resting on one backer's word is a story about belief in that thesis as much as the thesis itself.
Gemini may start phoning your mother to say you're running late. An Android Authority teardown of a forthcoming Android update found an unreleased "Gemini Calling" screen with sample prompts like "Call Mom and tell her I will be 15 minutes late" and "Call John and ask if he is coming for dinner," which would extend today's business-only Call for Me feature to personal contacts. The same teardown turned up granular, per-app permissions for Gemini's actions — including what look like phone-call permissions, and an option to opt out of receiving Gemini-initiated calls entirely — though those settings didn't work properly in testing. Both outlets note Google may never ship any of it.
What to watch: whether Ghost's batch two ships on time in late October, and whether any independent outlet ever confirms SignSplit's round.
Would you pay $3,499 for a computer whose only job is running your AI agents? Tell us in the comments.
