Five homegrown Australian startups have joined the AO Startups program run by Tennis Australia and are piloting their technologies across this year’s Grand Slam.
Reuse startup Bettercup is one of the new additions to the program and expects to wash more than 100,000 reusable cups, plates and other items during the two-week-long tournament.
Australia’s leading pickleball organisation, the National Pickleball League, has also joined the AO Startups program this year, along with Aircast, which offers fast, real-time streaming to sports fans, broadcasters and venues globally.
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The Aussie contingent also includes VueMotion, a smartphone-based AI platform that promises clinical-grade motion analysis without the need for wearables or lab setups, and Outcoach, which offers an AI coaching management platform designed specifically for tennis businesses.
Four international companies are participating in AO Startups this year, including CRED and RootNote from the US, Truefuels from Spain and Bronco from Ireland.
The program allows the selected companies to test their technologies and systems in real-time at the Australian Open, giving them access to an event attended by more than one million tennis fans and broadcast globally.
It also gives participants the opportunity for financial investment via Tennis Australia’s venture capital funds, AO Ventures and Wildcard Ventures.
This tournament, AO Ventures revealed it has made the first investments from its US$40 million fund since launching nine months ago.
The four companies are electronic line-calling technology firm Bolt6 (UK), incident management software platform Raven Controls (Scotland), and two companies involved in the fast-growing sport Padel: Mindspring Padel (Belgium) and Padel Haus (US).
To date, AO Startups has piloted more than 40 local and international startups over the past four years.
According to Tennis Australia’s director of innovation Dr Machar Reid, this year’s cohort reflects a “rapid shift” to systems that are using artificial intelligence.
“Across sport and major events, AI is no longer a future concept — it’s a present‑day competitive advantage,” said Reid.
“A large share of this cohort are using AI to solve real operational challenges – improving sustainability, enhancing content workflows, supporting coaches, capturing new audiences and generating insights that weren’t possible even two years ago.”