AI-Powered Tennis Trainer Raises $6M in Series A Round
Tennis-focused AI video processing company SwingVision is hoping to expand its score-taking abilities and delve into other sports after completing a $6 million Series A financing round.
Authentic Ventures led the investment, which included participation from tennis pros Lindsay Davenport and Alison Riske-Amritraj. SwingVision’s existing investors include additional ex-pros Andy Roddick and James Blake.
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Founded in 2019, SwingVision allowed recreational tennis players to record their games and automatically generate stats and highlights using only their phone’s camera. Since then, it has leaned on machine-learning models to offer real-time officiating features as well as live-streaming and gamification tools.
“I’m excited for this next phase as the team tries to solve the challenge of line calling for all players, whether they’re competitive juniors or recreational adults,” Roddick said in a statement. “It’s going to completely change the game.”
With a staff of 22, the company is planning to develop more offerings for tennis players at all levels, from juniors to touring pros, like tournament-grade officiating, remote coaching support and more analytics generated from the video already being gathered.
“The data we’re capturing is really valuable,” SwingVision CEO Swupnil Sahai said. “We’re telling you the shot speed, where they’re landing, what’s your accuracy. Pretty soon we’re going to start telling you how you should actually play somebody, like, what’s the actual strategy you should have against a particular opponent. That’s where it starts to become more of a coach itself.”
SwingVision is also developing plans to launch support for pickleball and padel.
“SwingVision has established its dominance as the market leader in computer vision for sports on mobile devices,” Authentic Ventures founder and managing partner Lindsay Lee said in a statement. “We think there is a large, global opportunity for SwingVision to leverage their beachhead in racket sports to change the way technology is used by amateurs and pro athletes alike.”
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