🔊 The Acquisition That's Rewriting Human Performance

This week, Exos, a global leader in human performance and athlete optimization, announced the acquisition of Infinite Athlete, a sports tech company founded by Charlie Ebersol, along with its subsidiary, Biocore, a biomechanics and data science firm acquired by Infinite Athlete in 2023.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the acquisition was backed by private equity firms Madrone Capital Partners and BDT & MSD Partners.

Under the agreement, Infinite Athlete and Biocore will operate under the Exos brand, bringing both companies’ performance training tech, biomechanics, and data infrastructure under one roof.

Why Does This Matter?

Exos, founded by Mark Verstegen in 1999, initially built its reputation by training world-class athletes and evolved to serve elite military personnel, corporate clients, and others.

Infinite Athlete, born from the merger of Tempus Ex Machina and Biocore, has developed one of the deepest data layers in sports, combining motion capture, biomechanics, and digital twins to quantify performance at the most granular level.

Looking at the trajectory of both companies, this acquisition isn’t just about sports.

It’s about taking deep scientific research and proven athletic frameworks to redefine how performance is measured, improved, and sustained across industries.

With Infinite Athlete’s technology and Biocore’s analytics, Exos is building the next era of human optimization and pushing it across corporate performance, healthcare, defense, and even cognitive productivity.

Athletic optimization has always been a preview of what’s next for humanity.

Athletes are constantly pushing the limits of body and mind, driving innovation, and revealing what’s possible when humans perform at their highest level.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it’s the ultimate testing ground for ideas and concepts.

Once that data, hardware, and methodology are refined in elite environments, it eventually trickles down to everyone else.

Peak athletic performance is quickly becoming the foundation for peak human performance, everywhere.

• PodPlay Technologies Raises $8M. PodPlay Technologies, a NYC-based vertical SaaS platform for modern, tech-forward recreational venues, announced its spin-off from PingPod, Inc. and closed an $8 million Series A funding round. Frontier Growth led the round. Frontier partner Dave Pandullo will also join PodPlay’s board. The company intends to use the funds to expand its engineering, sales, and customer-success teams to support rapid adoption and product expansion (more here).

• CityLegends Raises €1.71M. CityLegends, an urban sports social app, has raised €1.7 million. The round saw participation from GFR Fund, Dutch Sport Tech Fund, Leisure Fund, and SportInnovator, alongside follow-on investments from existing backers LUMO Labs and LeanSquare. CityLegends plans to use the new capital to expand into international markets, enhance its free and paid platform features, and grow its B2B media unit (more here).

• Fox Sports Invests In Tom Brady’s Shadow Lion. Fox Sports is investing in Shadow Lion, the content and marketing studio co-founded by Tom Brady, deepening its relationship with its star NFL analyst. The strategic investment will see Fox and Shadow Lion collaborate on original series, films, event programming, and digital content at the intersection of sports and culture. Financial terms of the investment were not disclosed (more here).

• Cosm & NBA Extend Partnership. The NBA and Cosm, a leading immersive technology, media, and entertainment company, announced a new long-term partnership to produce and distribute live NBA games in shared reality at Cosm’s immersive entertainment venues through 2030 and beyond. During the 2025-26 NBA season, Cosm will produce and present key national games across ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock, and Prime Video, as well as select games and events during NBA All-Star, the NBA Playoffs, and the NBA Finals (more here).

• ESPN & Sony’s Beyond Sports Expand Partnership. Sony's Beyond Sports, a data visualization company, and ESPN are strengthening their collaboration with a new agreement focused on innovative fan engagement technologies through animated telecasts. The new animated alt-casts will be featured within the next year for the NFL, NBA, NHL, and, for the first time, the WNBA. The telecasts aim to foster co-viewing and attract younger, casual fans through innovative presentation (more here).

• Vegas Golden Knights & Richtech Robotics Announce Partnership. The Vegas Golden Knights announced that Vegas-based technology company Richtech Robotics has been named a proud partner of the Vegas Golden Knights. This collaboration marks one of the first service robotics partnerships in the NHL. The partnership will introduce ADAM, Richtech Robotics’ beverage service robot, to the Golden Knights fan experience. Throughout the 2025-26 season, ADAM will appear at select VGK events and games, offering fans interactive beverage sampling experiences and tech-forward activations (more here).

• Under Armour Launches Lab96 Studios. Global athletic wear brand Under Armour is introducing Lab96 Studios, its new in-house content studio designed to deliver athlete stories in fresh, episodic, and cinematic ways. Lab96 Studios will produce short-form social series, docuseries, and long-form originals. The goal, according to Tyler Rutstein, senior vice president of global brand and Americas marketing and the new studio’s executive producer, is to do more to get in front of young Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers (more here).

• How Africa’s Formula 1 Ambitions Are Fueling A New Era Of Sports Investment. Multiple African countries are bidding to bring F1 to their native country. But beyond hosting rights, these bids reveal something deeper: a continental shift toward treating infrastructure as an asset class and sports as an industry rather than entertainment alone. Each proposal, whether South Africa’s government-backed bid, Morocco’s privately funded mega-project, Rwanda’s state-led innovation, or Nigeria’s youth-driven model, represents a new way of thinking about how sport can drive long-term economic growth (more here).

• Dream11 Launches Fantasy Sports In The UK & US Despite Betting Ban. Indian fantasy sports platform Dream11 has expanded into 11 new markets in the aftermath of the ban on real-money games in India, which has cut off its biggest source of revenue. The firm announced that it has launched its fantasy sports product in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia, Nepal, Bangladesh, the UAE, South Africa, and Sri Lanka in a huge expansion of its international profile. Dream11 will launch fantasy games based on soccer, cricket, and other sports (more here).

• MLS Introduces Immersive Embodied Sound. Along with EDGE Sound Research, the MLS will debut “embodied sound,” a technology that uses real-time object tracking to isolate the soccer ball as a unique audio source. Powered by the company’s patent-pending ResonX technology, embodied sound is designed to combine both auditory and physical sensations of sound in what EDGE describes as “an optimized and singular embodiment that you feel throughout your body.” It allows broadcast mixers to capture the precise energy of each kick, post hit, and player reaction, all without overwhelming the natural stadium atmosphere (more here).

• The New Athlete Playbook For Building Wealth Beyond Sports. Many athletes, especially those outside the top tier of major leagues, struggle with managing their money to ensure it lasts throughout their lives. Research from the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center found that 16% of NFL players file for bankruptcy within 12 years of retirement, and many face financial instability within two years of leaving the game. This problem is rooted in a lack of financial education, short career spans, and poor guidance for the players. Tom Zheng, Co-founder of The Players Company, recognized this while working in the NFL as a sports scientist, and he set out to help athletes with their financial literacy skills (more here).

This week’s guest on the Vetted Sports podcast is Jeff Berding.

Jeff Berding is the Co-CEO of FC Cincinnati, who, with Carl H. Lindner III, founded the club as a USL franchise in 2015.

With three seasons of record-setting success on and off the field in the USL, Berding led the club’s expansion efforts, which successfully resulted in the club’s ascension to Major League Soccer for the 2019 season and the opening of TQL Stadium in 2021.

Before founding FCC, Berding spent more than 19 years as an executive with the Cincinnati Bengals, where he led the team's Sales and Public Affairs efforts.

In this episode, we discuss:
‣ Why he left the NFL to start a USL franchise
‣ What it takes to build community around a new team
‣ The World Cup's impact on the growth of soccer in the US

Check out the full episode here: Apple | Spotify | YouTube