Peripheral Labs Taps Into Self-Driving Car Sensors to Bring Sports Fans Right Into the Game

Multiple reports indicate that live sports viewing has declined across certain sports, especially among Gen Z. To address this, leagues and broadcasters are working to make sports more engaging for fans by offering a broader range of viewing experiences, statistics, and analysis.

One way to do this is to use volumetric video generation, which lets users view the play from multiple angles, creating an inside-the-video-game experience. The core technology uses multiple cameras to capture 3D footage, allowing viewers to view it from various perspectives. Canada-based Peripheral Labs wants to make this technology affordable for leagues and teams so it can reach more broadcasters and fans.

Peripheral Labs was founded by Kelvin Cui and Mustafa Khan in 2024. Both have worked on driverless cars for the University of Toronto's team, which has won several trophies. Khan has worked as a researcher at Huawei, and Cui has experience working on chassis systems as a software engineer at Tesla.

"Both Mustafa and I are huge sports fans. He has been a massive Arsenal fan, and I grew up watching the Vancouver Canucks since I was seven. When Mustafa showed me his research about 3D reconstruction, my brain said it would be cool to watch hockey like this [in a free-flowing, multi-angle way]. This is how we started on Peripheral Labs," Cui said in a call with TechCrunch.

The company said the idea of volumetric generation isn't new. But with the latest AI models and advances in computer vision, the technology's founders are confident it is ready for widespread adoption. The duo is leveraging their experience with self-driving cars to apply robotics perception and 3D vision to reconstruct video in sports. This system can reduce the number of cameras required from over 100 to as few as 32, thereby reducing costs and operational overhead, according to Cui and Khan. The startup aims to keep hardware costs as low as possible for teams and broadcasters and to sign multi-year contracts for its platform.

The software platform will provide biomechanical player data and team and league statistics, using its own sensor stack similar to those in self-driving cars that capture the scene with depth. It will enable new ways to control how broadcasters and fans view the play through photorealistic 3D reconstruction technology. For instance, if fans wanted to track only the player with the ball, they could do that. They can also freeze the game to view different angles of a foul or a critical moment in play.

"While we work with off-the-shelf cameras, the way we package it with our experience in robotics and ML is what gives us an edge both in terms of platforms and also scaling from small practice enclosures to big soccer and football stadiums," Cui said.

On the software side, the platform said it can track multiple joints, including players' finger movements, to measure flexion. For instance, in the video above of two people playing football (soccer), the system measures knee and ankle flexion. This could give coaches more insight into body positioning and player flexibility, and help them improve.

The startup has raised a $3.6 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Daybreak Capital, Entrepreneurs First, and Transpose Platform.

Joe Ros, a partner at EntrepreneuFirst, noted that the fund was surprised by how large the following of the founders and their autonomous driving team is at the University of Toronto. He said investors are often hesitant to invest in sports-related startups, but Peripheral Labs is also an entertainment play.

"Their ultimate viewer is the consumer, and their demand for sports content is evergreen, not cyclical. With Peripheral, the new standard for that consumption will be immersive, volumetric video. And the work they're doing now in sports will give them the data, tech, and deployment moat to be the only person in the market able to enable this," he told TechCrunch over email.

Peripheral Labs said the startup was selective about the VCs it was bringing in, who could help with areas such as product development and go-to-market advice. The company has 10 engineers on its staff. It aims to increase headcount, with a focus on platform and hardware development, to reduce costs, lower system latency, and improve 3D reconstruction resolution.

The startup hasn't made any public announcements about its partnership, but said it is in discussions with several teams and leagues in North America. The company competes with other startups, such as Arcturus Studios, in the volumetric capture for sports.