Artificial intelligence is making noise in every industry across the world.
The sports industry, which has traditionally been slow to adopt emerging tech, is no exception.
Whether it’s sponsorship, fan engagement, recruiting, or sports betting artificial intelligence is integrating itself within the space.
But the one sector where we’re seeing a ton of emergence is within athletic performance and how technology is helping athletes perform better, recover faster, and play longer.
Here are 10 companies that are using artificial intelligence to revolutionize athletic performance:
- Hawk-Eye Innovations is one of the sports tech industry leaders in artificial intelligence, the company uses a computer vision system throughout numerous sports to visually track the trajectory of the ball and display a profile of its statistically most likely path as a moving image. They have raised several millions of dollars and have been around since 1999.
- Trace is recognized as the only soccer camera that records the game for you and automatically delivers a playlist of your players’ highlights. They have raised over $65 million as the company has experienced an immense amount of growth over the past several years.
- Zone7 uses AI and data analytics to analyze different performance metrics such as workload, fatigue, and injury risk, to identify potential injury risks before they occur. Founded by former Salesforce employees Tal Brown and Eyal Eliakim the company raised $8 million in their Series A round in 2021 and has 50 teams in numerous leagues.
- SwingVision is on a mission to democratize the pro sports experience for all athletes starting with tennis. Using their AI platform, they generate pro-quality stats, highlights & objective officiating, using just a smartphone. founded in 2019 by tech industry veterans Swupnil Sahai (Autopilot team at Tesla) and Richard Hsu (Cisco and LinkedIn)
- Sportsbox AI is an AI-powered company that develops ‘AI Coach’ mobile applications in sports. They capture, measure and analyze complex athletic motions in 3D, and combine them with the knowledge of leading instructors in every sport. They recently raised a $5.5 million seed funding round to continue the development of its single-camera 3D motion capture technology and expand into more sports.
- Veo is the world’s leading AI-powered and affordable soccer camera solution. They let you record your sports match without a camera operator. The Danish sports tech company founded in 2015 raised a $80 million Serie C round in 2022, enabling the company to offer its revolutionary video technology to every sports club in the world.
- SciSports provides actionable insights to improve football performance by enabling parties to get the most out of soccer data. They help with everything from scouting to performance analysis. In 2022 the Dutch company raised over $1 million and is using the funds to develop its football analytics applications and accelerate global expansion.
- PlaySight is revolutionizing the tennis world by bringing advanced analytics, video streaming, shot recognition, fitness tracking, and incredible technology to every club, team, player, coach, and court in the world. Founded by Chen M. Shachar, Evgeni Khazanov, and Yoram Bentzur in Tel Aviv in 2010, the company has been nominated by Fast Company as one of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in Sport and was acquired by Slinger for $82 million in 2021.
- Sportlogiq patented computer vision and machine learning technology tracks what the human eye cannot, allowing us to produce game-changing data & analytics. The company’s technology platform tracks the location and actions of every player on the ice, field, or court using standard game footage, enabling teams to successfully execute and plan their winning strategies and aid the broadcasters in engaging viewers. It was founded in 2014 and has raised over $7 million.
- HomeCourt is a mobile app that uses AI to record and track basketball shots, makes, misses, and locations. Founded by Bilal Mekkaoui, David Lee, Philip Lam, Reggie Chan, and Tony Sung in 2017. They have raised over $37 million from investors including Mark Cuban, the NBA, Mandra Capital, and Charmides Capital.
Over the next several years, we’ll see many of these companies grow and some of them will fail as it’s the nature of startups, unfortunately.
Regardless of winners and failures, artificial intelligence will forever be a prevalent force in the way athletes and teams operate daily.
