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Gemini Sports Analytics raises $3.25M to advance its AI-powered platform for front offices

Nancy Dahlberg
Nancy Dahlberg
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By Nancy Dahlberg

Gemini Sports Analytics,  creator of a no-code AI platform for predictive modeling, has closed a $3.25 million Series Seed round of financing to further develop the Miami-based startup’s recently launched Automated Machine Learning application.

The oversubscribed round was led by Miami Marlins co-owner Roger Ehrenberg and included investments from West Coast VC Social Leverage, which counts several team owners as LPs, former Celtics and Roma owner Jim Pallotta’s Raptor Group, and Florida Funders. The funding follows a $1.5 million seed round in July of 2022, which also included Florida Funders.

Founded and run by Jake Schuster, Gemini Sports Analytics, or GSA, serves as the co-pilot for front offices of the sports world. By adding advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms on top of a sports club’s existing data, the startup provides an operating system in which data workers increase productivity and executives can more easily interface with data insights around talent identification, talent development & roster management, on-field tactics, player performance and more.

In the past six months, the startup has signed their first customers in the NFL and NCAA and has been featured at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference and the NBA Summer League Tech Expo.

Ehrenberg, who seeded data platform unicorns including DataDog, Data Robot, and Komodo Health, called Gemini “the obvious next step” in the sports data revolution. “Jake and the team are today just scratching the surface of their value-add to front offices at global sports franchises. I’ve overseen this playbook in plenty of other industries and it’s time for sports to jump onboard.”

Adds Ryan Whittemore, General Partner of Florida Funders: “We believe the future of professional and high level amateur sports operations will be driven by data analytics, yet most coaches and front office don’t have the technical skillset to maximize these datasets, where critical player assessment is critical with massive contractual value at risk. Gemini Sports is the leader in the space and we are very excited to have Roger Ehrenberg joining the company with his tremendous sports business background.”

Schuster was a performance coach and a sports scientist in the professional sports world for a decade. He worked overseas and domestically, working with the Dutch Olympic Federation and the New Zealand Rugby team’s 2016 Olympics team, as well as stints with lacrosse, baseball, USA field hockey and women’s rugby. He also was senior scientist for a technology company out of Brisbane, Australia, that provided strength and movement testing systems for 500 professional sports teams around the world.  

In all of these roles, he and colleagues experienced the challenges of not having the ability to make full use of all the data being collecting on athletes every day on the field, in the gym, even in their sleep. GSA’s initial AI-powered makes data accessible faster, and new data models can be deployed in hours.

Schuster moved to Miami in 2019, he said in an interview last year. “When I got burned out on changing countries every two years for the world of pro sports, I had my eyes on this place because I had met Mayor Suarez a couple of times, including before his election, and I said, ‘I think this guy’s going to make Miami a pretty cool place to live’.”

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Nancy Dahlberg
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