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Atom Scott
Ikuma Uchida
Pragyan ShresthaHello everyone! I’m Atom from Playbox.
We officially founded Playbox Inc. here in Japan at the end of November 2024, after spending nearly ten years immersed in sports and AI research. During that time, I received invaluable support from friends, mentors, and various programs. Now I feel like I’m finally on the starting line, working closely with several Japanese clubs to take our research out of the lab.
Why Japan?
I’ve been living in Japan for over 15 years, and I believe it’s a great place to start this company. The sports culture here is incredibly strong—people are passionate, dedicated, and always looking for ways to improve. There’s also a deep respect for technology and craftsmanship, which aligns perfectly with what I’m trying to accomplish. There are so many great coders here too, did you know Japan has the highest numbers of Kaggle Grandmasters?
At the same time, there aren’t many startups offering new, boundary-pushing services in sports. That might be because the local market is relatively small, but the growing appetite for innovation makes Japan a great place to start. We can expand globally later.
What Playbox aims for
Our mission is to make human movement “computable.” I want to give computers the same kind of observational and optimization skills a sports coach has when watching players. Think about when AlphaGo shocked the Go community with moves that seemed almost alien yet were undeniably brilliant—that’s the kind of breakthrough I want people to experience in their everyday lives. I don’t want this technology stuck in a lab. I want people to use it, benefit from it, and, in turn, hopefully pay us to continue improving at Playbox!
Kicking Off With Sports
At Playbox, we are going to start with football. We are developing a platform that handles everything from recording and editing game or practice footage to analyzing it with AI. When a match finishes, the footage is automatically edited, player highlights are generated, and coaches or teammates can access them right away.
Currently, there are already quite a few AI-powered sports cameras on the market, but they tend to be pricey. If you look at the numbers, there are millions of football clubs worldwide, and if you include other sports, that number jumps above ten million. Obviously, it’s a huge market. However, the cost of specialized hardware—starting at around $1,200—and monthly subscriptions can be a major barrier, especially for amateurs or semi-pro teams. Meanwhile, two GoPros (199 USD each) can capture pretty decent panoramic footage without breaking the bank.
Video analysis technology is advancing quickly, too. It’s getting easier to track players or identify key moments with just a single camera. In the near future, I believe we might not even need special sensors like GPS for positional data, and we may even reach a point where a single smartphone can do all the recording and analysis. That’s why we’re starting with an amateur-focused product: we want to create something that’s budget-friendly yet offers high-quality data and insights.
Beyond a Single Product
While I’m super excited about how awesome this product could be, I also don’t want to aim for a single home run (just yet). I’d like to keep pushing the boundaries of what video analysis can do, not just in sports but in other industries as well. One of the best things about technology is its flexibility—the core of what we’re building at Playbox (extracting, digitizing, and optimizing human movement) can be applied across many fields, from security and footfall analysis to sports betting. I think it’s okay to explore and make multiple bets rather than narrowing it down to just one.
Founding Team
Atom Scott
Ikuma Uchida
Pragyan Shrestha
Location
Akihabara Virtual Office
We use a GMO virtual office in Akihabara.
1-6-16 Yamato Building 405, Kanda-Izumicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0024
Tsukuba Office
1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8577
University of Tsukuba, Industry Liaison & Cooperative Research (ILC) Building, Room 304
