In sports, an answer can be accurate at noon and outdated by kickoff. An injury announcement changes a fantasy lineup. A roster adjustment reshapes an opponent’s strategy. A shift in market odds alters the calculation behind a bet.
Snapp is building a business around that short shelf life.
The San Francisco–based startup says it has raised $4.6 million from investors including a16z Speedrun, Dorm Room Fund, Gold House Ventures, The House Fund and Valia Ventures.
Cofounded by Caviar entrepreneur Shawn Tsao, the company is developing sports AI for two distinct audiences: professional organizations looking for better analytical tools and fans seeking help with fantasy sports, betting research and game analysis.
Its consumer apps already have more than 20,000 users, according to the company. Its broader ambition is to make the research behind sports decisions faster, more accessible and easier to act on.
The thesis rests on a demanding feature of sports: useful analysis requires both historical context and an accurate understanding of what is happening now.
A question about a player’s outlook might depend on recent workload, an opponent’s defensive tendencies, a teammate’s availability and a changing market price. Finding those inputs can mean moving among injury reports, statistics platforms, fantasy apps and sportsbooks, and then deciding how the pieces fit together.
Snapp says its platform connects more than 30 live data pipelines and covers more than 100 sports leagues, combining those inputs within a conversational interface. The goal is to let users ask a question and receive analysis that reflects the latest available information.
“Winning should be fun. Getting an edge shouldn’t feel like work,” said Tsao, Snapp’s cofounder and CEO. “Our AI does the research and connects the dots, using live sports data to help you make smarter calls on your fantasy lineup and bets. You get to focus on enjoying the game.”
For consumers, that means connecting fantasy accounts from platforms such as ESPN, Yahoo Sports and Sleeper, then evaluating roster decisions in the context of an entire league. A potential waiver pickup, for example, can be assessed alongside upcoming matchups, roster needs and opponents’ likely moves.
The company also describes connections to more than 30 sportsbooks and prediction markets, including Kalshi and Polymarket, to compare prices and identify potential discrepancies. More advanced users can build and backtest predictive models using its data infrastructure.
For professional organizations, Snapp’s pitch centers on reducing the manual work involved in preparing scouting reports and tactical analysis. Its enterprise platform is designed to turn analytics and player-tracking data into opponent dossiers, performance breakdowns and recurring briefings.
Serving both markets gives Snapp several ways to find demand.
Snapp argues that specialization gives it an advantage. The company reports 44% better sports analysis than the frontier consumer AI models it evaluated, along with stronger performance on complex analytics and faster accurate answers.
For customers, the practical test will be how consistently that performance translates into useful decisions over a season.
Tsao brings experience building a consumer platform in another operationally complex industry. He previously cofounded Caviar, the restaurant-delivery company acquired by Square in 2014 and sold to DoorDash for $410 million in 2019.
Snapp’s leadership also includes cofounder Min Park, its chief operating and financial officer, whose background spans technology banking, investing and restaurant operations; chief technology officer Andrew Tamura; and chief AI officer Alex Marshall.
“AI models are great at answering static questions, but sports move in real time,” said Josh Lu, general manager of a16z Speedrun. “Snapp is building the dedicated data and reasoning infrastructure necessary to make conversational AI actually work for sports fans.”
The investment represents a bet on a focused approach to AI: combining specialized data, domain knowledge and tools built around recurring decisions.
Sports fans can download Snapp today at https://www.trysnapp.ai/.
