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

Heygo is a Beijing-founded hardware and AI startup trying to turn ski coaching into a consumer product. Two sensors clipped to the side of a snowboard boot measure ankle and board motion, and an AI model trained on real runs gives voice feedback through headphones at critical moments, reviews a run on the lift, and builds a personalized progress plan over time. The basic tier ships with the hardware; deeper analysis and individual plans are a subscription.

The company was founded in 2025 by Wu Zhenhua, a former Feishu regional and user-growth lead at ByteDance and ex-CMO of Vika, with co-founders from ByteDance, Tencent, and DJI. The founders' claim was that skiing runs on physical 'dark data' - edge, carve, and weight transfer under the boot - that cameras and even coaches cannot capture. The team spent two ski seasons across Japan, Xinjiang, and New Zealand collecting millions of labeled runs in extreme cold to train the mapping from foot sensors to actual ski behavior.

The bet attracted early backing: 36Kr reported in September 2026 that Heygo had closed a multi-million-dollar angel round led by Thick Snow Institution, and iHeima independently covered the same round on 2026-09-03. Heygo's first snowboarding hardware was scheduled for presale in September 2026 with delivery in October across 38 countries and regions, supported by ski associations and top instructors in New Zealand and Canada.

The open question is commercial verification: skiing hardware plus subscription adds cost to an already expensive hobby, and Heygo has not yet shipped units or disclosed user numbers. The team argues that a 1% penetration of regular skiers can support a strong business, and that the sensor-fusion architecture and personal motion model can later extend to surfing and skateboarding.