The first thing you notice is the typography. It’s clean, Scandinavian, and confident, the kind of design that suggests the data it serves is just as precise. You upload a clip of a backhand, a few seconds of grainy court footage from a phone. A minute later, a dashboard breaks it down: swing path, contact point, follow-through, all plotted against a ghostly overlay of a professional’s ideal motion. The analysis isn’t just numbers; it’s a visual story, the kind a coach might sketch on a whiteboard, but generated instantly and without subjective bias. This is the core experience SportAI is selling, not as a consumer app, but as an API buried inside the platforms where players already book courts and stream matches [SportAI, Unknown].
A wedge into the clubhouse
SportAI’s bet is infrastructural. Rather than building another SwingVision or Wingfield,consumer-facing apps that capture video and provide analysis,the Oslo-based company is licensing its computer vision and machine learning engine to existing players in the racket sports ecosystem. Its first major commercial contract, signed in August 2024, is with MATCHi, a booking and streaming platform for padel and tennis with over a million players [Sports Business Journal, September 2024]. The integration means a player booking a court through MATCHi could later receive automated technique breakdowns of their session, powered invisibly by SportAI. This B2B licensing model targets three core segments: clubs and coaches, broadcasters, and equipment manufacturers [Sports Business Journal, September 2024]. The ambition is to become the default analysis layer, the Intel Inside for sports technique.
The Play Magnus playbook
The team assembling behind this bet carries a distinct, and potent, Norwegian tech pedigree. Co-founder and Board Chairman Andreas Thome was the ex-CEO of Play Magnus, the chess-tech company built around world champion Magnus Carlsen and later acquired by Chess.com [SportAI, Unknown]. Thome isn’t the only connection to that world. Magnus Carlsen himself is an advisor and early investor [SportAI, Unknown], and board member Espen Agdestein is a veteran of the Play Magnus journey [SportAI, Unknown]. This group understands how to build a technology narrative around elite performance and democratize it. CEO Lauren Pedersen, a former NCAA Division I tennis player from New Zealand, provides the domain authenticity and drives the commercial strategy [SportAI, Unknown]. The recent addition of Endre Holen, former head of McKinsey’s global tech and media sector, as board chairman, signals a push toward enterprise-scale deals [eu-startups.com, 2025].
| Role | Name | Key Background |
|---|---|---|
| Co-founder & CEO | Lauren Pedersen | Ex-NCAA tennis player; leads B2B strategy [SportAI, Unknown]. |
| Co-founder & CTO | Felipe Longé | Leads technology development [finsmes.com, 2025]. |
| Co-founder & Board Chairman | Andreas Thome | Ex-CEO of Play Magnus (acquired by Chess.com) [SportAI, Unknown]. |
| Board Chairman | Endre Holen | Former Global Head of Tech & Media at McKinsey [eu-startups.com, 2025]. |
| Advisor & Investor | Magnus Carlsen | World chess champion; invested in pre-seed round [SportAI, Unknown]. |
Funding and the path to expansion
SportAI has raised at least $1.8 million in a seed round led by Skyfall Ventures, with other backers including athletes like tennis star Casper Ruud and footballer Alejandro Bedoya [SportAI, Unknown] [Sports Business Journal, November 2025]. Secondary sources report a subsequent $3 million raise, though the lead investor is unspecified [Tracxn, 2025] [finsmes.com, 2025]. The capital is fueling a focused expansion within racket sports,tennis, padel, pickleball, and beach tennis,with a product roadmap that includes swing comparisons, tactical breakdowns, automated highlights, and even equipment recommendations [F6S, Unknown]. The company has also integrated with court camera platform Save My Play, further embedding its analysis into the physical infrastructure of the sport [SportAI, Unknown].
2024 Seed | 1.8 | M USD
2025 Seed (reported) | 3 | M USD
The crowded court
No analysis of sports tech is complete without mapping the field. SportAI operates in a space with well-funded competitors, each with a different point of attack.
- SwingVision & Wingfield. These are the direct-to-consumer (and coach) champions, offering hardware-aided video capture and analysis via mobile apps. They own the user relationship. SportAI’s counter is to be the white-label engine for platforms that already have that relationship.
- Veo & PlaySight. These companies focus on automated broadcast and video capture for teams and clubs, often via fixed camera installations. They own the court. SportAI, by integrating with Save My Play and others, aims to analyze the footage those systems produce.
- Hudl. The giant in team sports performance analysis, now moving into individual sports. Its scale is immense, but its racket-sports-specific depth is an opportunity for a focused player like SportAI.
The risk for SportAI is being caught in the middle: without a flagship consumer app to build brand loyalty, and without owning the camera hardware that captures the raw video, its success is entirely dependent on the commercial execution of its partners. If MATCHi doesn’t promote the feature, or if a competitor like SwingVision decides to offer its own API, the wedge could blunt.
The question in the code
Every sports technology product is ultimately answering a cultural question about how we understand performance. For decades, that understanding was mediated by expert eyes,the coach’s glance, the broadcaster’s slow-motion replay, the player’s own unreliable feel. SportAI’s implicit answer is that objectivity is the new authority. It suggests that the most valuable feedback isn’t a guru’s pronouncement, but a neutral data stream that compares you to an ideal, or to your past self, with pixel-perfect precision. The ambition to move beyond racket sports into other technique-heavy domains like cricket or baseball hinges on this belief [Sports Business Journal, September 2024]. The next twelve months will test whether broadcasters, equipment brands, and major sports federations agree,and whether they are willing to pay to pipe that new form of authority into their own products. For now, the analysis is running, one backhand at a time, in the background of a million MATCHi bookings, quietly building the case that the future of coaching might not look like a person at all.
Sources
- [SportAI, Unknown] SportAI Raises $1.8M Seed Round Led by Skyfall Ventures | https://sportai.com/news/norwegian-tech-leaders-unite-to-launch-ai-powered-sports-tech-company-1
- [Sports Business Journal, September 2024] SBJ Power Up: SportAI signs deal with MATCHi | https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/SBJ-Power-Up/2024/09/06/
- [F6S, Unknown] SportAI Company Profile | https://www.f6s.com/company/sportai-sportai.com
- [eu-startups.com, 2025] Endre Holen joins SportAI as Chairman | https://eu-startups.com
- [finsmes.com, 2025] SportAI raises $3M | https://techfundingnews.com/ai-powered-sports-analysis-startup-sportai-scores-3m-to-transform-coaching/
- [Sports Business Journal, November 2025] SportAI raises $3M, including investment from Casper Ruud | https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2025/11/25/sportai-raises-3m-welcomes-new-chairman-investors/
- [Tracxn, 2025] SportAI Company Profile | https://tracxn.com/d/companies/sportai/__OL69yRnoXD0vc5gfjhK8iKF5r97eu1yJCvaSFzcAzf8