Atlanta sports tech disruptor sells company to personal training giant
A sports analytics company that counts the Atlanta Falcons and Mercedes-Benz Stadium among its clients has sold itself to a global giant in the wellness and personal training world.
The Atlanta-headquartered Infinite Athlete will now operate under the Exos brand, which offers training and wellness services to athletes, military personnel and employees of several Fortune 100 companies.
Infinite Athlete is a software development company building what it calls an “operating system for sports” — software that aggregates data collected from disconnected platforms. By using their platform, leagues, teams or other third parties can access data feeding from biometric sensors stuck to players, raw camera footage and real-time stats, among other information, to do whatever they see fit. A coach can analyze player performance, or a developer of a sports betting app could access historical stats.
The acquisition allows Infinite Athlete and its subsidiary, Biocore, to expand its reach across the city, said Infinite Athlete founder Charlie Ebersol. Exos has an extensive roster of clients in Atlanta, and the deal “opens the door to a whole class of clients and partners” that would’ve taken him a decade to build, he said.
For Exos, the expertise from both Infinite Athlete and Biocore enables it to deliver deeper, more personalized insights to their clients on how to best improve their performance. For example, Infinite Athlete’s data will predict and track the types of repetitive stress injuries that a defensive back or a Delta baggage handler experience, and Exos can show their clients how to best avoid the injury.
“My dream is that you take everything that’s happening on the football field or the basketball court, and those learnings translate to everyday people,” Ebersol said. “Our technology will now allow them to take all of the science from Biocore and deliver it to those people.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Both Ebersol and Biocore founder Jeff Crandall will remain with the company under its new structure.
Infinite Athlete acquired Biocore in 2023, which provides testing, analysis and other engineering services dedicated to the understanding and reduction of injury. These findings can be applied to protect people working across the automotive industry, athletics or the military.
Infinite Athlete’s companies have partnerships across the NFL, the NFL Players Association, U.S. professional basketball teams and Chelsea Football Club.
Exos, which is headquartered in Phoenix, has several training facilities across the country and also provides its services to corporate clients through camps, wellness retreats and other events. Its founder, Mark Verstegen, isn’t a stranger to Georgia, having worked in Atlanta more than 20 years ago as an assistant director of player development at Georgia Tech, where he implemented performance programs for football, men’s basketball and golf.
Verstegen has known Biocore’s Crandall for more than two decades through his work with the NFL Players Association. Conversations about a potential acquisition began to emerge when the two parties completed a study last year on how cleats and surfaces interact.
Ebersol’s relationship with Verstegen goes back more than 20 years, which he didn’t realize until recently.
When Ebersol was in college, he broke his back in a plane crash. Three years into his recovery, he was experiencing all types of back pain, so one of his friends told him to go to a training facility in Arizona called Athletes’ Performance. He’d eventually complete workouts at this facility that would set him on the path toward recovery, he said.
About a year ago, as the two companies were courting, Ebersol was visiting Verstegen in Arizona. As they were driving by one of Exos’ facilities, Ebersol remarked that he once trained at a nearby place. Verstegen said: “Yeah, that was my facility.”
“What made Exos so unique to me is that they have an expertise in education around performance that they’re already delivering to half a million clients a month, so now we can provide the technology so they can actually scale it the same way they do for athletes, to everybody,” Ebersol said.
Exos has added two fitness facilities in Georgia within the last few years: one in Alpharetta and another in Canton, which came about as a partnership with athletic equipment and flooring manufacturer Plae, which is headquartered in Cherokee County.
Atlanta has always been a key city for Exos with the number of “high performers” in the market, Verstegen said, referring to both athletes and corporate clients. He envisions Exos showing up more for its Georgia-based clients in the near term.
About the Author
Savannah Sicurella is an entertainment business reporter with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
