--- title: Vlad Cealicu description: Founder of LocalGhost.ai and Anchor Terminal. Previously co-founder and CTO of CryptoCompare / CCData (acquired by CoinDesk, October 2024). url: https://www.vladcealicu.com/ canonical_html: https://www.vladcealicu.com/ updated: 2026-10-11 language: en-GB --- # Vlad Cealicu Founder of [LocalGhost.ai](https://www.localghost.ai/) and [Anchor Terminal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/). Previously co-founder and CTO of CryptoCompare / CCData for twelve years, until it sold to CoinDesk in October 2024. London based, Romanian born. Writes Go backends that don't usually fall over and writes about why most software is built to own you. - Location: London / world - Stack: Go, Node, Postgres, Redis - Domain: data, AI, agents, crypto - Contact: vlad@localghost.ai - ENS: zerocool.eth ## Now Building two companies at once. **LocalGhost.ai** is a local-first, privacy-by-architecture personal AI platform. Everything runs on hardware you own, in code you can audit, with no cloud dependency. It's past Phase 1, and the development box has captioned and indexed 30,408 photos and 2,573 videos without sending any of them anywhere. **Anchor Terminal** grades the tools AI agents run on, from models and frameworks to data providers, scraping and payments. It runs the playbook behind the CryptoCompare exchange benchmark, co-founded with Quynh, who was the first CPO at CryptoCompare. Writing the [Hard Truths](https://www.localghost.ai/hard-truths) series alongside both. ## LocalGhost.ai The only cloud is you. A small silent box on your desk that runs the whole AI stack locally, with no subscription, no telemetry and no backdoor. If LocalGhost the company disappears, the box keeps working. - Fully open source (MIT), every line auditable. - Architecturally blind, the system prevents the company from seeing your data. - Buy the hardware once, or build it from the open BOM. - Ten Go daemons (ghost.noted, ghost.framed, ghost.voiced, ghost.tallyd, ghost.synthd, ghost.cued, ghost.mistd, ghost.shadowd, ghost.secd, ghost.watchd) own the control flow and call local models the way another daemon would call Postgres. - Encrypted, sharded P2P backup via The Mist, with no central server to seize. Links: [manifesto](https://www.localghost.ai/manifesto), [GitHub](https://github.com/LocalGhostDao), [Hard Truths](https://www.localghost.ai/hard-truths) ## Anchor Terminal Grade them all. Anchor the one. Anchor Terminal grades everything agents run on from public evidence, has a panel of agents review it, and publishes the arithmetic. - Listings graded AA to F from public evidence, score arithmetic public, every deduction sourced. - Reviewed by a panel of agents, each on a different base model with a different focus (security, cost, and so on). - Agent first. Every page has a Markdown twin. - [letme.dev](https://letme.dev) picks the top-graded tool for a task. - Rankings are never for sale. Audits are, for teams that want to know where agents get stuck on their product. Links: [terminal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/), [llms.txt](https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt), [for agents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/for-agents/), [get an audit](https://www.anchorterminal.com/audit/), [blog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/) ## Built before - **Co-founder and CTO, CryptoCompare / CCData (2014 to 2025).** Built it with Charlie Hayter from a side project into the largest digital asset data and index provider in the industry, about seventy people, Go and Node backend, FCA Benchmark authorisation, ISO and SOC 2. Powered indices for VanEck, MSCI, 21Shares, Coinbase and Pantera, and data feeds behind several spot Bitcoin ETFs. The exchange benchmark iterated from about 2017 and the settled version launched in 2019. Acquired by CoinDesk in October 2024. - **Early investor and advisor (ongoing).** Advisory and technical diligence for early-stage founders. - **Head of Software Development, LSBF and ADVFN (2009 to 2014).** Financial data, content management, ad systems. ## Also built (hosted on a home server) - [Galápagos Below](https://www.galapagosbelow.org/), PADI dive school on Isabela Island. - [YNG HAUS](https://www.ynghaus.com/), photographer portfolio. - [Casa Cactus Buenavista](https://www.casacactusbuenavista.com/), boutique accommodation booking site in Mexico. - [Roxana Duta](https://www.roxanaduta.com/), data analyst portfolio. ## Writing - [Hard Truths](https://www.localghost.ai/hard-truths) on LocalGhost.ai, essays on incentive design, AI sycophancy, bureaucracy and the software industry. - [Anchor Terminal blog](https://www.anchorterminal.com/blog/), notes from building it in public. - [Medium @vcealicu](https://medium.com/@vcealicu), older crypto data infrastructure writing. ## Elsewhere - Website: https://www.vladcealicu.com/ - LocalGhost: https://www.localghost.ai/ - Anchor Terminal: https://www.anchorterminal.com/ - letme: https://letme.dev - GitHub: https://github.com/vcealicu and https://github.com/LocalGhostDao - X: https://x.com/vcealicu - LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/vcealicu - Medium: https://medium.com/@vcealicu - Email: vlad@localghost.ai