Quell’s camera-free tracking is landing inside HITAI’s sports video platform. The London company has bought the Y Combinator-backed fitness gaming studio, folding its motion recognition technology into its own analysis stack.
Quell’s patent-pending software reads body movement in real time on compact, low-power devices, with no camera required. The studio, founded in 2020 by Lorenzo Spreafico, Cameron Brookhouse, Martin Tweedie and Douglas Stidolph, took an €8.63M ($10M) Series A led by Tencent in 2023; Khosla Ventures is also in its cap table.
HITAI’s own platform reads movement from ordinary sports footage. The firm applies computer vision and machine learning to training, event and broadcast video, producing motion data it is commercializing first in combat sports before widening to other disciplines.
Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal brings Quell’s engineering team along with its on-device motion recognition approach into HITAI’s stack, according to the company.
For HITAI, the acquisition shortens the path to products that analyze athletes without studio setups or wearable sensors. For Quell, it marks a shift from consumer fitness games toward sports analytics, where teams and broadcasters are paying for richer biomechanical data.
