Heygo bets an AI snowboard coach built on boot sensors becomes consumer hardware

Heygo makes two IMU sensors that clip to a snowboard boot, plus an AI coaching app that gives real-time voice feedback during a run, lift-line reviews, and personalized progress plans, with a paid tier for deeper analysis.

That skiing's physical 'dark data' under the boot can be measured, taught to an AI, and sold as affordable consumer hardware with a coaching subscription.

Angel round of several million US dollars, exclusively from Thick Snow / Houxue Institution (36Kr and iHeima, September 2026).

Wu Zhenhua, a former ByteDance Feishu regional and user-growth lead who had also been CMO at Vika, founded Heygo in 2025 with co-founders from Tencent, ByteDance, and DJI. The trigger was his own years of skiing frustration: private lessons cost thousands of yuan and coaches could not remember or measure what a rider's body actually did. The team spent two ski seasons in Japan, Xinjiang, and New Zealand collecting millions of labeled runs in temperatures down to -30 degrees Celsius.

The team built a data-labeling pipeline that breaks each run into turns and indicators, and says current measurement accuracy is within three degrees. In September 2026, 36Kr reported the multi-million-dollar angel round led by Thick Snow Institution, and Heygo scheduled its first hardware presale for September with October delivery across 38 countries and regions; basic software comes with the hardware, while advanced analysis and plans sit behind a subscription.

The founders attacked a real measurement gap: ski boots deform, bindings transmit force, and the board's edge state is invisible to video, so they instrumented the boot instead of the mountain.

They validated the data problem firsthand over two hemisphere-spanning ski seasons rather than in a lab, collecting millions of labeled runs in extreme temperatures.

Real-time voice feedback gives an immediate reason to buy, instead of asking consumers to watch post-session analytics.

The team is deliberately counter-consensus on market size: skiing is niche, but its users have high willingness to pay, and the same motion model could extend to surf and skate.

The main risk is that a thousand-yuan hardware plus subscription raises the bar for casual skiers, and no user or revenue figures exist yet.

A niche sport can be a wedge when sensors and data turn expert coaching into affordable feedback; the real asset is a motion model that may transfer.

As of 2026-09-04, Heygo remains a pre-delivery startup: its English site advertises real-time AI snowboard coaching, Discord community, and a newsletter, and Chinese coverage dated September 1-3, 2026 says presale is due that month with first deliveries in October across 38 countries and regions. The company reports several million US dollars in angel funding from Thick Snow Institution and claims millions of real ski-run data points and sub-three-degree measurement accuracy, but has not published customer numbers, shipments, or revenue.