Qalzy Banks $330K Pre-Seed for AI Kitchen Scale, Joining Rise of Ambient Wellness Devices

The London-based startup has $241K in Kickstarter pre-orders for its nutrition tech device as consumers tire of food-logging apps

Amid the growing number of home-based wellness tech — Eight Sleep mattresses, light therapy systems from Sunday Light, home health monitoring systems from Ultrahuman — there’s still room on the kitchen counter, a space that Qalzy is looking to fill.

The London-based startup, founded by former Microsoft engineers, is gearing up to launch an AI-powered nutrition scale, closing a $330,000 pre-seed round led by Jenson Ventures following $241,000 in Kickstarter pre-orders for its device.

Though Qalzy isn’t fully passive in the way a smart mattress or an air purifier is (a user still has to place the food on the scale), it lives on the counter as a dedicated piece of home wellness tech and arrives as consumers signal a fatigue with screens and phones.

The AI kitchen scale features a camera that accurately identifies, weighs and logs food in a single tap and connects straight to a user’s Wi-Fi so they can cook and track macros, vitamins and minerals in an accompanying app without manual entry. It also supports multiple users, so everyone in a household can have their own profile.

“The way most people track calories today is still far too slow, frustrating and tedious,” Qalzy CEO Kostas Koukoravas said. “We built Qalzy to remove that friction by combining precise weighing with AI so users can accurately log meals in seconds.”

The funding will enable the startup to expand its production capabilities, improve recognition accuracy and launch its scale internationally.

Qalzy also points to a 427,000-member Facebook community focused on low-calorie recipes and calorie counting as a built-in audience for launch.The customer base behind the Kickstarter traction tells its own story about who is buying into ambient nutrition tech.

The segments showing the strongest interest are women 35 and older managing postpartum or perimenopausal weight, men 35 and older focused on muscle building or weight loss, people with diabetes managing carbohydrates and insulin, and wellness-focused consumers, the company said.

The scale and app are free to use, with premium app features available by subscription.