Generative AI fashions have demonstrated to app builders that combining a strong information base with the proper mannequin can allow them to supply customers companies — as soon as reliant on expensive professionals like therapists or govt assistants — at a fraction of the worth. Former VP of product at health firm Whoop, Rami Alhamad, has an analogous tackle diet together with his new app Alma.
The iOS app, launching for customers in North America as we speak, is a well-designed app with a calorie tracker and a diet information with an AI layer on high of it.
Alhamad thinks that health apps like MyFitnessPal make diet monitoring tedious, with customers having to manually seek for dishes and enter them for various kinds of meals. As a substitute, he thinks it’s best to simply speak to (or kind to) Alma’s AI assistant about what you ate, and the app will work out the parts and calorie consumption by way of estimates. You may regulate these measures after the app reveals you calorie rely as effectively.
Alternatively, you possibly can take a photograph of your meal, and the AI algorithm will establish dishes for you. Such options are already accessible in apps like Kholsa-backed Healthify and YC-backed Snapcalorie. Nonetheless, Alma is banking on its design, number of enter strategies, and ease of use as key drivers for progress.
In addition to calorie monitoring, you possibly can ask the AI assistant to recommend meals to satisfy your objectives of fiber and protein consumption. Plus, you possibly can add a menu image and ask the AI assistant to advocate appropriate gadgets in response to your purpose.
The app additionally provides you a rating, which relies on what you ate on a specific day by way of energy and macros. The app makes use of that rating to offer you tips about bettering your weight loss program.
What’s extra, as you chat extra with the AI assistant within the app, it learns your preferences and provides you recommendations accordingly. You may see these insights in your profiles and edit them as effectively.
The corporate expects to generate profits by way of a month-to-month subscription of $19 or an annual subscription of $199.
The story behind Alma and future plans
Alhamad, who constructed a sports activities tech startup referred to as Push and finally bought it to Whoop, informed TechCrunch he was pondering of doing one thing new within the space of well being and diet after exiting Whoop in 2022. In line with him, whereas there are trackers for exercises and sleep, there isn’t a sensible resolution to monitoring diet.
“For the last 10 years of my life, I have constantly gained and lost weight. I have spent a long time on apps like MyFitnessPal, typing stuff to track my food intake. When ChatGPT came around, just like a lot of other people, I started using it for meal planning and kitchen support. However, it wasn’t personalized. So last year, after I left Whoop, I started thinking about this problem,” Alhamad stated.
Alhamad, who grew to become an entrepreneur in residence at Menlo Ventures to construct Alma, believes that within the client house, there will probably be specialised firms utilizing AI that concentrate on just one subject. The startup has raised $2.9 million from Menlo Ventures and Anthropic till now.
On the technical entrance, the corporate is utilizing a mixture of fashions to get outcomes. Alma famous that it’s utilizing information from Harvard Vitamin to fetch solutions. The corporate stated it has a number of individuals on employees specializing in dietary information to develop its knowledge set. Alhamad stated that the startup additionally desires to look past the U.S. to carry well being information from world wide.
The Alma group wish to construct on meals discovery within the app as effectively. Presently, you possibly can ask for recipes and get solutions from the AI assistant, however you possibly can’t save them for future reference. The app desires to auto-populate meals recommendations based mostly in your objectives and preferences. Plus, it’s going to even have a method to prepare dinner meals simply from what you may have within the pantry.
Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude can already do loads of these issues, however the friction for the person is that it’s a must to immediate them accurately with context every time. Apps like Alma try to remove the headache of writing lengthy prompts by way of app options. Samsung’s Meals app gained some options like pantry monitoring and recipe recommendations based mostly on the gadgets that you’ve in the home final 12 months.
Shawn Carolan, a accomplice at Menlo VC, stated that ease of coming into your meals consumption makes Alma a lovely resolution.
“If I eat 20 things in a day, it’s tough to record each one of them by trying to find them in a list. With Alma, you can just talk to it and register all of that quickly. If something took you 30 seconds and a new app reduces that to just a few seconds, it becomes a key usage driver,” Carolan stated.
He added that proper now, loads of persons are not consulting a nutritionist, and Alma may give them quick access to that type of data.
“People are spending thousands of dollars a month to get injections to lose weight. So the question is, if you had this perfect nutritionist in your pocket who could help you with your goal, maybe you can take a drug-free approach to achieving your health goals,” Carolan stated.
