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Pioneering AI technology from Bain & Company powering Athena Pathway’s bid for British victory in inaugural Women’s America’s Cup

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Unique, cutting-edge AI simulation tools and technology deployed by Bain to optimise British competitors’ racing performance in the world’s premier global sailing competition

LONDON, Oct. 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Pioneering AI advances developed by Bain & Company are being harnessed by Britain’s team of world-class women sailors in their bid to make sporting history by winning the inaugural Women’s America’s Cup in this weekend’s finals at the pinnacle of global sailing competition.

Bain is partnering with Athena Pathway and its sailing teams, Britain’s entrants in the Women’s and Youth America’s Cup races, to bring state-of-the-art AI technology to power their challenges for victory in the world’s oldest sporting trophy contest, with this year marking the first-ever women’s race in the competition. Watch the video here.

Athena Pathway was founded by the British sailing champions Hannah Mills OBE and Sir Ben Ainslie, the world most decorated Olympic sailors, to change the landscape of competitive high-performance sailing by bringing diversity and equal opportunities to the sport in the UK. Britain’s Athena Pathway teams in the Women’s and Youth America’s Cup include women sailors and youth sailing talent with a collective six Olympic medals and 22 sailing World Championship medals. They are competing against crews from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.

Bain & Company’s Advanced Analytics Group, the firm’s AI practice, and a team of expert Bain consultants have worked in close collaboration with Athena Pathway sailors, coaches and teams at its base in Barcelona and remotely, to develop and deploy unique AI-powered simulation tools and technology to enhance and optimise the performance of the Athena Pathway teams in their bid for America’s Cup wins.

The AI technology developed by Bain for Athena Pathway exploits detailed race performance data pulled from sensors fitted on the specialised, high-performance AC-40 yachts used in the America’s Cup racing – a new class of one-design foiling monohull yacht designed to ensure teams secure wins based entirely on the talent, technique and skills of competing crews.

Harnessing the data captured from race trials, practices and early phases of the America’s Cup competition, the unique AI technology from Bain enables sophisticated analysis by the Athena Pathway teams  supported and advised by Bain’s expert consultants, to maximise speed and optimise manoeuvres on the water, enhancing sailing efficiency in the high-speed racing and helping to achieve the best overall race performance. AI-powered simulations allow the Athena Pathway teams the test multiple “what if” race scenarios onshore during training, saving time versus testing these on the water, as well as adjusting real-time decision-making in simulated race conditions on the water.

Hannah Mills, Athena Pathway’s co-founder and Team Principal at the yacht’s helm in the women’s races, said: “Using AI to really help us learn and evolve and upskill very quickly has been a huge part of our training in preparation for the America’s Cup. Bain’s partnership with us has been integral to trying to achieve our goal of winning. When I look at what Bain has been doing with us, particularly on the ground, I’ve never had a partnership quite like it.”

The AI simulations, driven by Bain’s custom-built deep-learning AI model, unique to this project, acts as a ‘digital twin’ of Athena Pathway’s real-life AC40s yachts. This enables the crews to optimise so-called “velocity made good” (VMG), a key driver of race performance, for the yachts using interactive mapping enabling visualisation of both past, real sailing manoeuvres as well as simulated scenarios the teams want to test out. The AI models, pulling from around six million individual data observations captured by the sensors used, across more than 40 types of input variable, provide instantaneous feedback and real-time insights on specific scenarios of interest to the teams as they plan their race tactics and strategy.

Chris Draper, head coach for Athena Pathway, added: “Having the AI tools and being able to share that collaboratively has been enormous for us. It really has been a game-changing relationship. We’ve got sensors throughout the boats that give us direct feedback on how things are moving, the loads and strains, so you can identify exactly what is happening. We’re literally learning every day how to optimize performance and the AI tool is enabling us to do that, providing us with really, really interesting results. It thinks slightly outside of the box and it’s proving exceptionally useful for us.”

Discussing the partnership with Athena Pathway, Hugo Parkinson, Bain senior partner and leader of the firm’s Advanced Manufacturing practice in EMEA, said: “We are hugely excited to have partnered with Athena Pathway in this ground-breaking way. The unique AI tools we’ve been able to bring to their challenge in the America’s Cup is pioneering and is helping the teams solve some of their biggest challenges in the racing. It’s learned how to sail the boat and now it makes a series of AI-powered recommendations on how to sail it faster. Being able to bring this sort of advanced analytics to such an exciting environment is incredibly helpful in furthering the ambitions of Athena Pathway in this top-tier sport. For us at Bain, there’s also the tremendous benefit of what we’ve learned through this collaboration where we’ve been able to identify multiple real-world applications for this technology in all kinds of business use cases.”

In addition to backing Athena Pathway’s challenge for the America’s Cup with AI technology, Bain has also worked with the teams, and their coaches and leaders, to enhance their operations at their Barcelona base in multiple additional ways, with Bain support for optimising teamwork, help with upgrades to IT systems, onshore base efficiencies and planning, and improved documentation in the teams’ playbooks.

Juan Carlos Gay, Bain senior partner in the firm’s Energy & Natural Resources practice and global Head of the Capital Projects Acceleration team, who co-led Bain’s Athena Pathway collaboration with Hugo Parkinson, added: “Our partnership with Athena Pathway has been a tremendous opportunity to bring our technological and AI capabilities, and our deep business expertise in a wider range of ways, to this thrilling realm – competitive yacht racing – outside of the business world. Bain champions diversity in everything we do, which is core to our mission, so it’s been particularly inspiring for us and Athena Pathway to come together in support of the young and female talent competing in this inaugural Women’s America’s Cup race.”

Media contacts
To arrange an interview or for any questions, please contact:

Gary Duncan (London) — Email: gary.duncan@bain.com
Katie Ware (New York) — Email: katie.ware@bain.com
Ann Lee (Singapore) — Email: ann.lee@bain.com 

About Bain & Company

Bain & Company is a global consultancy that helps the world’s most ambitious change makers define the future.

Across 65 cities in 40 countries, we work alongside our clients as one team with a shared ambition to achieve extraordinary results, outperform the competition, and redefine industries. We complement our tailored, integrated expertise with a vibrant ecosystem of digital innovators to deliver better, faster, and more enduring outcomes. Our 10-year commitment to invest more than $1 billion in pro bono services brings our talent, expertise, and insight to organizations tackling today’s urgent challenges in education, racial equity, social justice, economic development, and the environment. We earned a gold rating from EcoVadis, the leading platform for environmental, social, and ethical performance ratings for global supply chains, putting us in the top 2% of all companies. Since our founding in 1973, we have measured our success by the success of our clients, and we proudly maintain the highest level of client advocacy in the industry. 

 

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BitradeX BXC First Two Subscription Rounds Sell Out, Total Subscriptions Exceed 14M USDT

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LONDON, May 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — BitradeX Capital’s ecosystem equity token, BXC, has completed its first and second subscription rounds, selling a total of 50 million BXC with subscriptions exceeding 14 million USDT. The first round sold out in 90 seconds, while the second closed within 48 hours.

While the fundraising size is not unusually large by crypto standards, the structure of the sale has attracted market attention. The first two rounds were not open to the public, but limited to high-tier BitradeX users. The first round was available only to V5 users and above, while the second round expanded access to V3 users and above.

According to BitradeX’s tier system, V3+ users typically have higher recurring investment activity through AiBot, longer platform usage history, and stronger ecosystem participation. This means the early BXC allocation was absorbed mainly by the platform’s internal high-value user base, rather than short-term speculative participants.

This approach differs from many token fundraising campaigns that prioritize broad public participation and market hype. BitradeX instead adopted a more selective, staged model, gradually lowering the participation threshold while keeping the sale within its active ecosystem community.

BXC is positioned as more than a standard platform token. Its value framework is linked to BitradeX Capital’s broader ecosystem, including its exchange business, AiBot quantitative strategies, BTX Card payments, and Labs incubation platform. Public information indicates that BXC holders may receive staking rewards, benefit from ecosystem buybacks and burns, and gain priority access to Launchpad projects and governance participation.

The third subscription round is launched on April 30 at $0.35 USDT per BXC, with a total supply of 100 million BXC. It is now open to users participating in AiBot recurring investment. The fourth round price is expected to rise to $0.45 USDT.

The long-term value of BXC will ultimately depend on the growth of BitradeX’s underlying businesses, including exchange profitability, AiBot user expansion, and BTX Card adoption. However, the rapid sellout of the first two rounds suggests that BitradeX’s core user base has already shown strong confidence in the ecosystem’s future.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitradex-bxc-first-two-subscription-rounds-sell-out-total-subscriptions-exceed-14m-usdt-302767467.html

SOURCE BitradeX Capital

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South and East Asia identified as hotspots of global warming related impacts on male fertility

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BEIJING, May 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — A major new study has shown that South and East Asia dominate patterns of global warming related decline in male fertility with the strongest and most consistent evidence coming from India, Pakistan and the southern parts of China.

The effects of increased environmental temperatures on male reproductive health include declining sperm concentration and motility and increased sperm DNA fragmentation, or genetic damage that can hinder fertilisation and embryo development.

Male related factors account for around 50 per cent of infertility cases around the world and the impact of rising ambient heat on semen parameters raises serious implications across wide areas of Asia where total fertility rates are in serious decline.

Outcomes of the study undertaken by the Taiwan IVF Group and Ton Yen General Hospital, Taiwan (China) in collaboration with Stanford University (USA) are being presented at the 2026 Congress of the Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE) in Beijing.

Research principal and Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University, Dr Jack Yu Jen Huang, MD, PhD, FACOG said: “Given the temperature sensitivity of spermatogenesis, even modest increases in ambient temperature could have cumulative, population-level effects over time.

“As global warming accelerates, male reproductive health may represent an emerging climate sensitive public health concern.”

The testes function optimally at temperatures lower than the internal body heat level, and previous studies have shown elevated scrotal or ambient temperatures can impair sperm production.

The latest research explored global patterns to reveal comparative data across regions. It is based on a systematic review of international studies on temperature exposure and semen parameter trends between 2000 and 2024. Artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning tools were applied to extract key variables including geographic regions and semen outcomes.

Dr Huang said studies examining occupational heat exposure alone were excluded from the analysis as they reflected localised, job-specific conditions rather than broader climatic trends.

“Our findings therefore represent population level climate associated temperature effects including consistent seasonal variations showing poor semen quality parameters in warmer periods.”

The global patterns on temperature associated lower sperm concentration and motility show South and East Asia as major hot spots of concern followed by the Middle East, Europe and North America.

“South and East Asia are likely more affected due to a combination of factors including higher baseline ambient temperatures and rapid urbanisation that contribute to greater cumulative heat stress on spermatogenesis,” Dr Huang explained.

“With ongoing global warming, chronic heat exposure may increasingly impact male reproductive health.”

Dr Huang said potential approaches to address the issue include:

increasing public awareness of heat exposure and reproductive health;encouraging protective behaviours;expanding research integrating climate and reproductive health data; andexploring clinical and lifestyle interventions to mitigate heat-related effects.

The research team was assisted by research intern Jeffrey Zi Kang Huang from Taipei American School, particularly in the application of artificial intelligence in biomedical research including AI-assisted data analysis and pattern recognition across global datasets.

“Further longitudinal and mechanistic studies will be important to better define causality and guide interventions,” he added.

The ASPIRE Congress is being held at the China National Convention Centre in Beijing. More than 3,000 scientists, clinicians, nurses and counsellors in assisted reproduction from around the world are attending the Congress.

For further information, go to https://www.aspire2026.com

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/south-and-east-asia-identified-as-hotspots-of-global-warming-related-impacts-on-male-fertility-302767469.html

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eclicktech Attends Amazon Ads unBoxed 2026, Highlighting Four Key Trends Shaping AI-Driven Global Marketing

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SHENZHEN, China, May 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Amazon Ads recently hosted its annual flagship event, Amazon Ads unBoxed 2026, in Shenzhen, bringing together advertisers, agencies, and technology partners to explore the next phase of AI-powered marketing innovation. This year’s event focused on how AI is reshaping the advertising ecosystem through advancements in audience targeting, creative production, campaign management, and measurement capabilities.

Yeahmobi, the global marketing brand under eclicktech and an Amazon DSP validated partner, attended the event alongside industry leaders and ecosystem partners to discuss emerging opportunities for international brand growth in an increasingly AI-driven media environment.

During the conference, Amazon Ads introduced a series of product and solution updates across four major areas:

Advanced audience targeting powered by Amazon’s first-party data infrastructure to help brands reach high-intent consumers more effectively;AI-assisted creative production designed to improve content efficiency and support personalized advertising at scale;Intelligent campaign management tools aimed at simplifying cross-channel advertising workflows;Enhanced measurement and attribution capabilities to provide advertisers with clearer visibility into campaign performance and return on investment.

According to Yeahmobi, Amazon DSP is evolving beyond a standalone programmatic buying platform into a broader marketing infrastructure supporting the full customer journey, from brand awareness to conversion.

Since becoming an Amazon Ads partner, Yeahmobi has developed integrated advertising solutions spanning awareness, audience engagement, and conversion optimization. The company stated that it has supported brands across sectors including cross-border e-commerce, consumer electronics, AI applications, and financial services in scaling their global advertising efforts through Amazon DSP.

At the event, Yeahmobi also showcased its proprietary advertising management platform, Yeahgrowth, which integrates campaign management, data analytics, and performance optimization capabilities to support centralized multi-platform operations and improved campaign visibility.

“AI is fundamentally reshaping how brands approach global growth,” said William Liu, General Manager of Yeahmobi. “We see Amazon Ads as a strategically important part of the global marketing ecosystem. Our focus is not only on media execution, but also on building scalable growth infrastructure through deeper API integration, AI-driven optimization, and data collaboration.”

Yeahmobi stated that it will continue expanding its collaboration with Amazon Ads to support brands navigating increasingly complex global media environments.

About Yeahmobi
Yeahmobi is a global marketing brand focused on helping businesses achieve international growth through digital advertising, data-driven operations, and AI-powered marketing solutions.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially due to various risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eclicktech-attends-amazon-ads-unboxed-2026-highlighting-four-key-trends-shaping-ai-driven-global-marketing-302767470.html

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