sports-technology
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Sankar Jayaram
Sankar (Jay) Jayaram is the co-founder and CEO of Quintar, a Santa Clara startup building augmented reality experiences for live sports. A former Washington State University engineering professor who founded the school's virtual reality lab in 1994, he co-founded VOKE with his wife Uma Jayaram, sold it to Intel in 2016, and served as CTO of Intel Sports before spinning out Quintar in 2021. Quintar became the official AR developer for the PGA Tour and shipped PGA Tour Vision for Apple Vision Pro.
Betterguards Technology
Betterguards Technology is a German-engineered sports-tech company that builds adaptive ankle braces using a patented micro-hydraulic piston. Unlike rigid braces or taping, the BetterGuard moves freely with the athlete and stiffens only at the instant of a dangerous ankle roll, reacting several times faster than the human body. Founded in Berlin/Hennigsdorf and now with a New York operation, the company sells direct-to-consumer and has been adopted by athletes across the NBA, NFL, MLS, MLB, NCAA and Olympic programs after joining the 2022 NBA Launchpad cohort.
ScorePlay
ScorePlay is an AI-powered media asset management platform built specifically for the sports industry. It centralizes photos, videos and live broadcast content into one system, then uses computer vision and facial recognition to automatically tag athletes, sponsors and moments so teams, leagues and federations can find and distribute content in seconds instead of hours. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in New York, ScorePlay is used by 200+ sports organizations worldwide and raised a $13M Series A in February 2025.
Mahesh Devalla
Mahesh Devalla is the Chief Technology Officer of Players Health, a Minneapolis-based sports insurance and risk-management company that protects youth athletes and sports organizations. He leads product and engineering strategy and applies human-centered, ethical AI to athlete safety and real-time decision support. Before Players Health, where he rose from Director of Engineering, he architected enterprise-scale AI platforms across finance, utilities and software at firms including Citi, Bank of America, American Water, Hexagon and App Orchid. He holds a master's in computer science and artificial intelligence from Dartmouth College, authored the book 'The AI Dilemma: Why Businesses Still Fail to Embrace AI,' and has been named a USA 40 Under 40 honoree and ranked among global top AI leaders.
Lava.ai
Lava.ai is a San Francisco software company that runs a Realtime AI customer-engagement platform for sports teams, live-event venues, retailers and large enterprises. Its engine ties together ticketing, point-of-sale, mobile wallets, apps, parking and live game feeds through 250+ integrations, then uses AI to deliver personalized offers, membership perks, stored-value rewards and clienteling 'in the moment.' Co-founded by TIBCO founder Vivek Ranadive and former TIBCO executive Wen Miao, Lava counts more than 50 franchises and brands - including the NBA, Real Madrid, the LA Rams and the Cleveland Browns - among its users.
Quintar, Inc.
Quintar is a Santa Clara-based extended reality company building a device-agnostic spatial XR platform that turns physical venues into digitally enhanced 'Quintar Places.' Its patented Q.reality platform combines a Spatial Visual Positioning System with True Spatial Video to overlay real-time, data-driven content on live sports and other events. Quintar is the official mobile AR and XR developer of the PGA TOUR and built PGA TOUR Vision, the first professional golf application for Apple Vision Pro. Founded in 2021 by former Intel CTO Dr. Sankar (Jay) Jayaram and Dr. Jeff Jonas, the company has raised roughly $11 million, including an $8.2 million Series A in 2024.
Mark Floreani
Mark Floreani is the CEO and co-founder of FloSports, the Austin-based streaming company he started in 2006 with his brother Martin and Madhu Venkatesan on roughly $10,000-$20,000 and a van. A former All-American runner at the University of Texas, he filmed the company's breakout moment - Ryan Hall's U.S. half-marathon record - from the back of a noisy pickup truck. FloSports now streams around 50,000 events a year across more than 25 sports that mainstream broadcasters overlook, built on the bet that passion, not audience size, defines a great sport. Floreani took over as CEO in 2018 and has pushed the company deeper into college sports, hockey, motorsports and, more recently, AI-powered production and dubbing.
Tony Verutti
Tony Verutti is the CEO of Betterguards Technology, a German sports-tech company whose adaptive ankle brace uses a micro-hydraulic piston that stays loose during play and locks in a split second when the ankle rolls, then releases. A lifelong athlete who tore his ACL four times and grew up in a physical therapist's household, he took the top job in April 2023 and pushed the product into the NBA, NFL, NCAA and Olympic teams, backed by the NBA's Launchpad program. His pitch: athletes shouldn't trade mobility for protection, and gear should be built on science, not tradition.
HELIOS
HELIOS is a Portsmouth, New Hampshire sports-technology company that builds a hardware-free wearable and app platform for hockey. Its Core sensor clips to a shoulder pad and uses stride-recognition machine learning to measure skating explosiveness, agility, speed and balance, then syncs the data with shift video so players and coaches get instant, benchmarked feedback the moment a shift ends. The company's stated goal is to give youth, college and pro players the same quality of performance data that was once reserved for elite programs, sold as a hardware-plus-software membership.
Pelotero
Pelotero is a Player Intelligence Platform for baseball and softball that blends computer vision, bat-sensor data, and professional coaching expertise to deliver personalized player development. Using nothing more than a phone video, the app scores a hitter's swing across 50+ mechanical attributes, identifies the gap between current performance and potential, and turns that data into individualized training plans. Founded by former MLB player Chris Colabello and hitting coach Bobby Tewksbary and led by serial software entrepreneur Bennett Fisher, the company has assessed more than 10,000 players and works with 40+ organizations plus scouting service Perfect Game.
Dorian Pieracci
Dorian Pieracci is the Co-Founder and CEO of MOVRS, a Los Angeles sports-technology company that turns ordinary video into structured, labeled 3D data about how humans move. Founded in 2020, MOVRS builds AI-powered biomechanics and digital-twin tools for sports and entertainment partners, from baseball pitching analysis to immersive broadcast experiences. A Georgetown-trained sports industry executive and UC Berkeley graduate, Pieracci is a Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech accelerator alum who pivoted MOVRS from direct sales to a partner-led model and assembled a team drawn from MLB and major sports media.
Zack Isaacs
Zack Isaacs is the co-founder and CEO of Movemint, a mobile-first platform rebuilding how athletic events are discovered, registered, run, and remembered. Strava's first API hire, he spent five years wiring the fitness world together - linking Garmin, Wahoo, Peloton, and Zwift - and led engineering for Strava's paid Routes, one of its most lucrative features. In 2023 he left to fix the part of endurance sport that still felt broken: the sign-up. Backed by Underscore VC and Strava co-founder Michael Horvath, Movemint launched in February 2024 and has roughly tripled its business every quarter since.
Chris O'Dowd
Chris O'Dowd is the co-founder and CEO of WIN Reality, an Austin-based virtual reality training platform for baseball and softball hitters. A former professional catcher who played six seasons in the minor leagues after starring at Dartmouth, he built WIN Reality with his father, longtime MLB executive Dan O'Dowd, to close the gap between practice speed and real game speed. The Meta Quest-based product lets players face game-speed pitching from a library of thousands of real pitchers, and is now used by youth players, more than 200 colleges, and a majority of MLB franchises. The company raised a $45M+ round led by Spectrum Equity in June 2022.
David Lokshin
David Lokshin is the co-founder and CEO of Trace, an AI sports video company that places an autonomous camera on the sideline of youth games and hands each player a personalized highlight reel. He started the company in 2011 as AlpineReplay, a side project with his father Anatole, building GPS sensors that tracked skiers and snowboarders, then pivoted the same data-and-camera engine into team sports. A Harvard applied-math graduate who began his career trading FX options at Barclays, Lokshin describes Trace as 'the creator and keeper of memories.' The company has raised roughly $71.8M through a Series C and employs around 130 people from its Austin base.
Derek Belch
Derek Belch is the founder and CEO of STRIVR, the enterprise virtual reality training company he spun out of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab in 2014. A former Stanford kicker turned graduate assistant football coach, Belch built a VR prototype to give quarterbacks mental reps off the field, then pivoted the company from sports to the Fortune 1000. STRIVR has since trained more than a million workers in VR for clients including Walmart, Verizon, Bank of America and the NFL, and has raised roughly $87.5 million through a Series B.
Trace
Trace is an Austin, Texas sports technology company that uses computer vision, GPS sensors and AI to automatically film youth sports games and edit a personalized highlight video for every single player - no camera operator required. Originally founded as AlpineReplay to track skiing and snowboarding, the father-and-son team pivoted to team sports and built one of the largest video datasets in youth athletics. Trace has delivered millions of automated highlights to over a million athletes and raised a $47M Series C at a reported $190M valuation.
WIN Reality
WIN Reality is an Austin-based sports technology company that turns the Meta Quest headset into a virtual batting cage. Founded in 2018 by former Colorado Rockies GM Dan O'Dowd and his son, ex-pro player Chris O'Dowd, the company lets baseball and softball hitters take game-speed reps against a library of nearly two million real pitches from more than 7,000 pitchers - plus AI swing analysis through a phone. Its mission is to democratize professional-grade training, putting the same tools used by most MLB franchises into the hands of youth, travel-ball, high school and college players.
Torey Korsunsky
Torey Korsunsky is the Chief Business Officer of Novig, the commission-free sports prediction exchange that lets fans trade against each other instead of the house. He founded Units, a story-driven daily fantasy app that hit a $6M GMV run rate before winding down in 2024, and earlier built U.S. growth at sports-AI company WSC Sports. A University of Pennsylvania grad, he is fixated on making sports gaming feel like the stories fans already love rather than a spreadsheet.
Vaidhy Murti
Vaidhy Murti is the founder and CEO of WIT, a New York fan-engagement and consumer-data platform that runs sponsored contests, polls, and instant-win games for teams across the NFL, NHL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, MLS, and NCAA. A Princeton computer-science grad, he built his first company, the college dating app Friendsy, out of his dorm room and became the youngest founder backed by Lerer Hippeau at 21. WIT took four years and three pivots to turn profitable, and now powers digital activations for nearly 100 venues, leagues, and Fortune 1000 brands.
Brian Park
Brian Park is the CEO of Skillest, the world's leading remote sports coaching marketplace that connects athletes with elite coaches through asynchronous video analysis. A Silicon Valley veteran who was the 95th employee at Yahoo and co-founder of Yahoo! Messenger, Park pivoted to sports tech to democratize access to elite coaching - putting a world-class coach in every athlete's pocket. Under his leadership, Skillest has grown to 600+ coaches, 200,000+ golfers, and secured partnerships with Stephen Curry's UNDERRATED Golf and Arccos Golf, becoming the digital coaching standard in golf and expanding across multiple sports.