Carv Raises £2.3M to Put a Performance Coach Inside Every Ski Boot

Carv, a UK sports technology company, has raised £2.3 million to scale its smart ski boot performance system. The company has developed an instrumented insole that fits inside standard ski boots and uses an array of pressure sensors to capture detailed data about the skier's weight distribution, balance, and movement patterns run-by-run, turn-by-turn, and moment-by-moment. This data is processed and delivered to the skier's smartphone in real time via a companion app, which provides personalised coaching feedback and tracks technique improvement over multiple sessions.

Skiing technique improvement has long been constrained by the practical limits of ski instruction. Even highly motivated recreational skiers typically ski for a limited number of weeks each year, often without access to qualified instruction during their time on the mountain. When instruction is available, lessons provide brief snapshots of technique rather than the continuous feedback that underpins skill development in other sports — where heart rate monitors, GPS devices, smart watches, and force plates have transformed the feedback available to athletes across disciplines. Carv brings a similar data-driven approach to skiing, where the complexity of the activity — three-dimensional movement on a changing surface, at speed — has historically made objective technique measurement difficult.

The technical foundation is an array of pressure sensors embedded in a thin insert that sits beneath the foot inside any standard ski boot. The sensors capture the distribution of pressure across the foot throughout each turn — data that encodes the fundamental mechanics of ski technique: where weight is centred on the ski, how load shifts from edge to edge, whether the skier is leading with the correct foot in each phase of a turn. This data is wirelessly transmitted in real time to the Carv app, which uses biomechanical models to identify technique strengths and areas for improvement, and delivers immediate audio coaching cues that the skier can act on during the very run they are skiing.

The funding will be used to expand manufacturing capacity, develop the coaching algorithm's capabilities, and grow the company's user base through partnerships with ski resorts, ski schools, and sports retailers across Europe and North America.

Sources

• Carv — company website