Stadia Ventures and MITRE Announce 2023 Cohort for Mentorship and Technology Acceleration

Collaborations Help Identify Technologies in Sports and Esports to Benefit U.S. Government Agencies

Stadia Ventures is delighted to extend its partnership with MITRE, a not-for-profit technology company that works across government and in partnership with industry and academia.

Now in the third year of collaboration, MITRE and Stadia have again identified four companies from Stadia’s portfolio of 72 sports and esports companies that match the needs of MITRE’s federal sponsors. The selected companies will take part in an accelerator program that will match their founders with mentors from MITRE’s Bridging Innovation program, which focuses on building pathways to discover, accelerate, and deliver innovation from nontraditional sources to solve national problems.

“Stadia and MITRE believe that technology from sports and esports can transfer to additional industry sectors,” said Alex Chalmers, managing partner at Stadia. “Stadia continues to provide a new source of innovation through our network of startups, portfolio companies, and sports and esports business leaders.”

This year’s program includes a live session at MITRE’s McLean, Virginia headquarters and a “demo day” to introduce the portfolio companies to representatives of government agencies as part of a pitch event.

The 2023 cohort of Stadia companies includes:

• Fancam/CrowdIQ (Tinus Le Roux)
  
  Fancam leverages high resolution photography and computer vision to extract facial analysis data from large crowds and drive deeper insight into fan/attendee behavior.

• Nix Biosensors (Meridith Cass)
  
  Nix Biosensors’ single-use, wearable hydration sensor for athletes, military, and laborers that removes the guesswork of when to drink, what to drink, and how much to drink.

• Axle AI (Sam Bogoch)
  
  Axle ai is the developer of axledit, a browser-based, collaborative cloud video editor. Their solutions help small to mid-size organizations improve the way they search, share, edit and archive digital video content.

• Helios (Bill Near)
  
  Helios helps developing athletes and teams get better faster. Using a proprietary performance sensor and app, anyone can take control of their development bringing the previously unseen to light through instant video highlights, rankings by birth year, and gamification.

“We are delighted to again be working with the MITRE team this year,” said Chalmers. “This will be the third year of our program and we are delighted that these four companies will take part. MITRE is leading the way in being the bridge between the innovation ecosystem and the government community, and we are looking forward to this year’s program. Sports tech can find a home across a number of industries. We will continue to drive opportunities for our companies.”

“The federal government is increasingly seeking innovative solutions from nontraditional sources,” said Russ Graves, director of Bridging Innovation at MITRE. “Stadia Ventures’ extensive innovation ecosystem around sports technology creates an opportunity for MITRE to assist in bringing forth new approaches to bear on the nation’s biggest challenges in healthcare, public safety, transportation, finance, cybersecurity, and defense.”

ABOUT STADIA

Stadia Ventures is the global Sports Innovation Hub for early stage investment in sports and esports. The three pillars of the ecosystem include a broad, independent growth fund, a deeply connected global network of sports and esports executives and a world class accelerator which combine to create unprecedented market opportunities and new technology. The success of the Stadia portfolio companies has led to Stadia Ventures being one of the longest running and truly global players in the sports and esports technology space. It is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri with offices in Frisco, Texas and Denver, Colorado & in The Hague, Netherlands. For more information, visit: http://www.stadiaventures.com.

About MITRE

MITRE’s mission-driven teams are dedicated to solving problems for a safer world. Through our public-private partnerships and federally funded R&D centers, we work across government and in partnership with industry to tackle challenges to the safety, stability, and well-being of our nation. Learn more at mitre.org.

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