HITAI Acquires Quell to Add Camera-Less Motion Tracking to Its Sports Computer-Vision Platform
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A small, price-undisclosed IP/tech acquisition consolidates a YC-backed motion-gaming startup into an existing sports computer-vision player, updating the player map without introducing a new capability tier.
HITAI Acquires Quell to Add Camera-Less Motion Tracking to Its Sports Computer-Vision Platform
HITAI, a London-based movement-intelligence platform for sports, has acquired the technology and IP of Quell, a UK fitness-gaming developer and publisher of the Impact console and its Shardfall combat game. The deal covers Quell's motion-recognition models, firmware, and hardware stack, but not a stated price. Quell was founded in 2020 by Lorenzo Spreafico, Cameron Brookhouse, Martin Tweedie, and Douglas Stidolph, and raised an €8.63 million ($10 million) Series A led by Tencent in 2023, with Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Heartcore Capital also on its cap table.
HITAI's product turns existing training, event, and broadcast footage into structured movement and performance data using computer vision, with no wearables or dedicated camera rigs, and it is commercializing first in combat sports before expanding to other sports. Quell's contribution is a patent-pending, camera-less motion-recognition system built to run in real time on compact, low-power hardware. Folding that sensor-based approach into a video-first computer-vision stack gives HITAI a fallback for the broadcast and training environments where camera placement is unreliable, extending its reach across coaching, athlete analysis, live-event statistics, and broadcast content.
For investors, this is a case of a well-capitalized, VC-backed sports-tech startup exiting via an asset sale rather than an independent scale-up, despite backing from Tencent, Y Combinator, and Khosla Ventures. For builders in sports and fitness AI, it signals that pairing complementary sensing modalities — vision-only versus embedded motion models — is becoming a more practical route to product coverage than betting on a single capture method.