In elite sport, every team holds dozens of data systems. GPS trackers, injury logs, training-load monitors, video analysis, coaching notes. They sit in separate silos. When a head coach needs to answer “Can I push this player tomorrow?”, the answer lives across five applications. Kitman Labs‘ claim is to collapse those silos into a single intelligence layer; what the company calls “the operating system for sport.” Founded in Dublin in 2012, Kitman Labs is now used by more than 2,000 teams worldwide, including the NFL, NBA, MLS, NWSL, Premier League, Bundesliga, and NCAA.
Why Dublin? An AI Company from a Leinster Rugby Dressing Room
Stephen Smith isn’t an engineer. He spent years as Senior Injury Rehabilitation & Conditioning Coach at Leinster Rugby before co-founding Kitman Labs in November 2012 with Iarfhlaith Kelly. The founding story is not a typical startup arc. It is an operator-founder turning a real sporting problem into a product.
Today Kitman Labs’ HQ sits in Silicon Valley, yet the engineering side of the Intelligence Platform remains Dublin-based, at the CHQ Building / Joyce’s Court office on Talbot Street. According to the Irish Times, much of the platform was developed in Dublin. The company is registered with the Irish Companies Office as “Kitman Labs Limited” and employs roughly 51-200 people locally. After 14 years, it is one of the clearest examples of a Dublin-born AI company that scaled globally while keeping its roots in place.
Recent Milestones
In November 2021 Kitman Labs closed a $52M Series C led by Guggenheim Investments, bringing total raised funding to $82.3M. The Sports Office (a Manchester-based football athlete management system) was acquired in 2020, and Presagia Sports (a Canadian medical software) in July 2021. Together the two acquisitions gave Kitman Labs the industry’s largest athlete-data dataset.
In October 2023 the Premier League academy partnership launched: a Football Intelligence Platform for every EPL and EFL club academy. PGMOL (the Premier League’s match-officials body) followed in July 2024, and reached full deployment in November 2025. Referees’ medical, fitness, and performance data now flow into a single real-time platform.
In January 2025 the NeuroLogix integration added the C3Logix concussion-management module. In April 2025 all eight clubs of the new USL Super League (a US women’s professional soccer league) adopted the Performance Medicine Solution.
What’s Next
Kitman Labs is investing along four tracks. The iP: Intelligence Platform is expanding into Defense; the Defense module launched in 2025, with the US Army and US Air Force as early clients. EMEA expansion continues through the Manchester and Dublin teams. AI-driven injury-prevention models are scaling across more leagues. And NCAA collegiate coverage is deepening.
Sport has long been excellent at collecting data; the problem has been the silos. Kitman Labs’ 14-year bet is to collapse those silos into a single AI layer, and to do it from Dublin.
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