Baseball players spend countless hours training for the big leagues, but their practice time with pitchers and pitching machines is limited.
WIN Reality, a virtual reality-based training tool delivered through the Meta Quest headset, has made it possible for batters to not only get more practice hours in, but to swing at nearly two million different pitches from a library of more than 7,000 real-life pitchers.
The technology is used by thousands of youth players and hundreds of professional and collegiate baseball athletes, including a majority of Major League Baseball franchises and more than 100 NCAA baseball and softball teams.
MLB players who used WIN’s technology increased their batting average by 19 percent and their on-base percentage by 12 percent, according to a joint WIN-MLB study.
Austin-based WIN Reality announced Wednesday that it planned to further improve its technology and expand its audience with the addition of a $45 million growth equity investment from Spectrum Equity.
WIN Reality CEO Chris O’Dowd told Built In via email that he plans to use the funding to expand the 60-person team to nearly 100 employees by the beginning of next year. The company is currently hiring for more than 40 product-focused roles, including technical game designers, full-stack web developers and product managers.
Last year, WIN Reality more than tripled its revenue and customer count, gaining momentum among athletes across all levels.
While WIN Reality has been a hit with baseball players of all levels, O’Dowd said the company will be designing a product for younger players across all skill levels.
“While athletes and their families invest a lot of time and money into training, the best-in-class coaching and training tools used by professionals are still out of reach for the majority of people,” O’Dowd said in a statement. “WIN lowers the many barriers to access, giving athletes of all ages and levels the chance to use the same top-notch training tools the professionals use.”
