Former NFL Star Vernon Davis Invests in Smart Home Gym JAXJOX
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Former star NFL tight end Vernon Davis has joined at-home connected gym startup JAXJOX as an investor and brand partner. The company’s products include free weight and kettlebells with built-in sensors to track workout data such as reps, sets, average power exertion, calories burned and heart rate.
JAXJOX’s complete InteractiveStudio smart gym stands about 80 inches tall, including its 43-inch 4K touchscreen to view metrics and stream workouts. The product costs $2,499 plus a monthly $39 membership. Davis, who made two Pro Bowls in 14 NFL seasons, will create workouts for JAXJOX, participate in live Q&As and share fitness tips with community members.
Since his NFL career ended in 2019, Davis has acted in Hollywood films such as Gasoline Alley with Bruce Willis and Muti starring Morgan Freeman. His investment in JAXJOX follows the company’s addition of four-time U.S. Olympic gold medal winner Michael Duane Johnson to its advisory board last month.
At-home fitness startup Kabata also makes sensor-embedded free weights. Kabata secured funding last month from English soccer star Daniel Sturridge, former NBA player Zaza Pachulia, Golden State Warriors executive Kirk Lacob and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert.
Techstars’ current accelerator in Indianapolis also features two smart gym startups designed to reinvent the in-facility weightlifting experience. RepOne similarly inserts sensors on the weights themselves, while EvenLift deploys AI-enabled cameras to track a user’s exercise, the weight they’re lifting, their number of reps and their form.
“Now [people are] coming back to sort of dumb, big box gyms, and they expect that same experience now they had at home,’’ Jordan Fliegel, the managing director of Indianapolis’ Techstars, recently told SportTechie. “…These gyms realize that they need to evolve.”
