Irish sports and data science company Orreco has secured a $2 million series A investment from Silicon Valley-based venture firm True Ventures. The funding will go towards creating 30 jobs at its Galway operation and setting up a new office in Los Angeles.
Orreco uses machine intelligence to find hidden signals in data including GPS and performance statistics to help improve athletic performance and reduce the incidence of illness and injury. The company’s data solutions have already gained significant traction in Formula 1, on the PGA tour, and with players and teams in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, English Premier League and Olympic sports.
The Orreco team includes 16 PhDs who have worked with 35 Olympic medalists since the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and published more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers.
Founded in Ireland in 2010 by sport scientist Dr Brian Moore and hematologist Dr Andrew Hodgson, Orreco’s technical team has expanded to include Dr Andy Barr, former head of performance at the New York Knicks and Manchester City FC; Dr Ara Suppiah, team physician to the winning 2016 US Ryder Cup team; and former Ireland rugby team captain Keith Wood.
Orreco’s early investors include Brian Patterson, former chairman of Vodafone, Kevin Toland, CEO of Dublin Airport Authority and Dennis Jennings, who was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
PGA tour and major winning golfers Padraig Harrington and Graeme McDowell also became investors after experiencing the benefits of Orreco’s services first hand.
“We are delighted to join the True portfolio given their proven track record in identifying market-leading solutions, particularly in our space,” said Dr. Brian Moore. “The investment will allow us to grow our US presence, further develop our product suite and support ongoing investment in research and development. We will actively recruit additional world-class data and sports scientists, and software engineers.”
Orreco is the first high-performance sport company in the world to partner with IBM Watson, the cognitive computing platform. The Irish company’s actionable data and expertise is fed into Watson to help coaches and professional athletes make key decisions based on the latest scientific research and personalized solutions for nutrition, sleep and training programme.
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