X Games Turning AI Judge Platform Into Its Own Business

The press release from the X Games says that Owl AI successfully predicted the podium finishes for the superpipe contest. Scotty James took first, Yuto Totsuka finished in second, and Ayumu Hirano came in third. The model predicted that contest after analyzing practice rounds of the riders. That, in the minds of the folks over at X Games, was a success.

The rollout was was anything but perfect. Integration of Owl into the broadcast was clunky. The audience missed most of Yuto Totsuka’s run when the producers interrupted the broadcast to have the AI module give a recap of his previous run.

Bloom came to the X Games from the world of tech. An All-American football player at the University of Colorado, Bloom was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2006 NFL draft. He later made the U.S. Olympic Ski team twice, and won 10 FIS World Cup gold medals in Freestyle Moguls.

He’s a member of the National Ski Hall of Fame, and then followed that up with a 13-year career in the technology industry. After a flurry of announcements in the past few weeks - which include partnerships with Rivian and a Utah-based craft brewery - it's clear that he is using several pages from the tech playbook to reshape the X Games.

The company will be based in Boulder, Colorado, and have its headquarters off of Pearl Street, according to The Colorado Sun’s Jason Blevins. 

Josh Gwyther has been named its CEO. He was once the head of AI Solutions Architecture at Google. The company was backed by an $11 million seed round. It was led by S32, which was founded by Google Ventures creator Bill Maris. Menlo Ventures and Susa Ventures also contributed to the round.

“When we launched The Owl in Aspen, the mission was clear: to modernize and elevate how sports are judged, experienced, and understood, using the power of AI. What I didn’t anticipate was the immediate surge of excitement among all the stakeholders including athletes and also other leagues. It was obvious that we were on to something big and necessary,” Bloom said in a statement.