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You’ve heard of car airbags that deploy within milliseconds to protect passengers. How about an airbag for your knee?
This is what former basketball player, Kellen Shaw, is working on with his startup, The exoskeleton of hippopotamuses – A “knee sleeve” that measures pressure on the knee joint and bulges around the knee to protect it from major injuries, such as Anterior cruciate ligament and MCL tears. The wrap inflates in 30 milliseconds, which the company says is faster than the 60 milliseconds it takes for an ACL tear to occur.
“I personally have loved basketball since I was 6 years old, and over the next decade, it became my entire life,” Shaw told TechCrunch.
“I dedicated myself to intense training…but when I was 17, while preparing for my professional basketball career and the NCAA tryouts, I heard a disgusting pop from my knee while landing from a dunk,” he said.
The injury ended Shaw’s athletic career, but gave him the idea to combine AI-powered sensors with a “knee bag.” He left the London School of Economics to develop it.
The brace uses predictive artificial intelligence to detect risky movements in real time and deploys airbags around the knee, which could save athletes thousands in medical expenses, Hypos said.
Shaw and his co-founder Bhavy Metakar (CTO) initially bootstrapped Hippos by investing $1,000 of their savings to develop a prototype and generate initial pre-orders from clinics and athletes. The startup has now raised a $642,000 seed round from investors Possible Ventures and Silicon Roundabout Ventures.
The company has already received “over six figures in pre-orders,” and will use the new funding to further develop the product and push toward a full launch in about three months, Xu told Techcrunch.
He said the final unit will cost about $129 and comes with a subscription plan of $29 per month to $99 per month that covers AI-based insights, mini air packs and exercise tracking.
The startup has conducted trials with soccer clubs in the United Kingdom as well as with star athletes, such as world ski champion Alex Schluby of the US Ski Team. “I admire the protective function and feel that it is very light and comfortable! This brace gives me a feeling of psychological security,” Shalubi said in a statement.
Beyond elite athletes, Shaw said the product could be used for injury prevention for everyone else, such as workers in construction jobs or the elderly.
Hippos are probably pushing an open door. While approximately 150,000 injuries occur in the anterior cruciate ligament It has been reported In the United States every year, 8.6 million Worldwide Among adults, these statistics do not include infections among children. Most health solutions focus on rehabilitation rather than prevention.
Furthermore, existing companies addressing joint protection in sports and rehabilitation focus on traditional supportive devices or post-injury support.
Brands in this area include Enovis Donjoy (Bone arches and supports), External mobility beautiful (primarily rehabilitation devices), and Trauma doctor (Sports braces and protective gear for injury management). None of these solutions offer predictive or reactive technology in the way that the Hippos airbag does.
Also participating in the tour were Huggingface co-founder and chief organization officer Thomas Wolfe; Wayve co-founder Ammar Shah, and Dr James Brown, UK Athletics’ lead sports medicine physician.
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