Chelsea to use AI to analyze player injury patterns
Chelsea's owners are bringing AI into football. Todd Boehly's firm, Eldridge, has acquired a 50% stake in Sudolabs to implement AI technology across its diverse asset portfolio.
Chelsea's owners are bringing AI into football. According to a report in the Financial Times, Eldridge, Todd Boehly's asset management firm, has acquired a 50% stake in the European artificial intelligence company Sudolabs to implement the technology across all the assets it manages, from the Premier League club to the film studio A24.
The agreement grants Eldridge and all its subsidiaries access to a team of about 70 experts, including 40 engineers, who will assist in AI implementation projects. As part of the deal, Boehly intends to use AI to simplify due diligence procedures and other parts of Eldridge's investment process to accelerate analysis stages and reduce headcount across the company.
In the case of Chelsea, the plan is to use AI to analyze injury patterns to reduce the time players spend on the sidelines. Boehly purchased Chelsea for 4.25 billion pounds in 2022 following the sanctions imposed on the previous owner, Roman Abramovich. The film studio also has a 75 million dollar research partnership with Google DeepMind aimed at examining how the technology can assist in filmmaking.
According to Boehly, the reason for this focus on AI is that companies with "unique data, physical assets, and intellectual property that cannot be replaced" will be in the best position to deal with the AI storm. This strategy, he claims, will allow companies in Eldridge's portfolio to "go on the offensive" while improving their investment process.
Eldridge was founded by Boehly and his longtime partner Tony Minella in 2015, and the group has investments in more than a hundred companies across a variety of industries, including security, communications, finance, and sports. The company previously worked with Anthropic on several projects but ultimately chose to invest in Sudolabs to avoid becoming too dependent on a single AI provider.
"You never want to rely on a single source, no matter what you're talking about," Boehly said. "I think we see that in our supply chains, in our energy infrastructure, and even the Strait of Hormuz teaches us that."
