Exclusive: Boston tech firm rolls out AI-driven performance tracking with Prep Baseball
The big picture: Pison is betting on its AI-driven neural sensors to revolutionize youth baseball training, quantifying the impact that stress, head injuries and other hurdles can have on reaction times down to the millisecond.
The latest: Pison announced Tuesday a revenue-sharing partnership with Prep Baseball, the nation's largest scouting service for amateur baseball.
Pison's wearables will roll out next month in Prep Baseball's two venues in Indiana and Kansas City, where more than 175,000 young baseball players practice.
Pison has measured cognitive performance in military members and ALS patients before branching out into sports.
Pison rolled out Baseball Pro earlier this year after partnering with Timex on making the device.
How it works: Baseball Pro is a platform in a wrist-worn wearable that analyzes the electrical signals running through a player's brain and nervous system to their muscles.
It can measure the impact that mental health, wellness and other cognitive factors have on baseball players, including their reaction time while batting or pitching.
What they're saying:"If you're cognitively declined, and you've got all the physical attributes in the world, you're not going to overcome that cognitive decline," says Marc Deschenes, a former pro baseball player and vice president of sports operations at Pison.
But a player who is mentally prepared with fewer physical strengths can perform better than expected on a given day, Deschenes tells Axios.
Zoom in: Pison and Prep Baseball will track each player's cognitive performance as part of their overall stats.
The player owns the data, and it will be up to the player to decide whether to release that information to a scout or college recruiter, says Pison CEO John Croteau.
Flashback: Pison started testing its cognitive performance technology for baseball in 2024 with five colleges: Penn State University, West Virginia University, Auburn University in Alabama, Oklahoma State University and Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma.
What's next: By 2026, Baseball Pro will roll out across all other Prep Baseball venues, which serve thousands more players.
A baseball coach at Lansing Community College, another college working with Pison, plans to use players' metrics from Baseball Pro to make daily lineup decisions.
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CNN
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Trump gave China the AI chips it wanted. Beijing isn't saying thank you
In a surprising reversal of the United States' years-long technology restrictions on China, President Donald Trump last month allowed Nvidia to resume sales of a key AI chip designed specifically for the Chinese market. Yet rather than celebrating, Beijing's response has been noticeably lukewarm, despite having long urged Washington to ease the stringent export controls. In the weeks since the policy U-turn, Beijing has called the chip a security risk, summoned Nvidia for explanations and discouraged its companies from using it. The less-than-welcoming sentiment reflects Beijing's drive to build a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain – and its confidence in the progress its rapidly advancing chip industry has made. But the cold shoulder may also represent some political posturing. Despite significant advances in its semiconductor sector, China still needs America's chips and technology. Experts said China's national champion Huawei has developed chips with performance comparable to — and in some cases surpassing — the newly approved Nvidia chip. However, China still wants the more advanced AI processors that remain blocked under US export controls. In the years since Trump first imposed tech restrictions on Huawei during his first term, China's chip technology has made significant strides, spurred by the frustration that mounted as Washington piled on export controls, said Xiang Ligang, director-general of a Beijing-based technology industry group and an advisor to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. 'We have this capability, it's not as they imagine – that if China is blocked, China won't be able to function, or that China will be finished,' he said. To him, the policy about-face only reflects the importance of having a wholly homegrown chip supply chain. 'For Chinese companies, we may only have one choice if we wish to ensure a relatively secure supply of chips – that means relying on our own domestically produced chips,' Xiang said. That may be China's goal, but in the high-stakes AI race, with all its national security implications, the US remains the leader, at least for now. The chip in focus is Nvidia's H20, which was released by the AI chip leader last year to maintain access to the Chinese market following strict export controls put in place under the Biden administration that stopped the export of chips with high processing power. Last month, Trump greenlit the sales of the chip to China after banning it in April as the US trade frictions with China deepened. Trump has justified his decision by calling the chip 'obsolete,' as it lags behind the company's cutting-edge AI processors like Blackwell or H100, from which H20 is derived. He and his officials appeared to have embraced a view long promoted by Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang – that US can maintain its tech leadership only through ensuring its chips remain the global standard. 'You want to sell the Chinese enough that their developers get addicted to the American technology stack,' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last month. But the dramatic reversal has fueled questions about Trump's transactional approach to national security – once considered off-limits to bargaining. China, on the other hand, is alarmed by the alleged security risks of Nvidia's H20s like 'tracking and positioning' and 'remote shutdown' features, capabilities that some US lawmakers have called for but Nvidia denies it has placed in its chips. China's cyberspace watchdog and industry ministry have since summoned the American chip giant over the security concerns and urged firms to avoid H20 chips, a development which was previously reported by Bloomberg. One major Chinese tech company which has developed its AI models has received notice from the authorities urging it to exercise caution in the use of H20s, and advising it not to purchase them, a company insider said on the condition of anonymity. CNN has reached out to the ministry and the cyberspace authorities for comment. An Nvidia spokesperson told CNN that NVIDIA 'does not have 'backdoors' in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them.' 'Banning the sale of H20 in China would only harm US economic and technology leadership with zero national security benefit,' the spokesperson added. But China believes the US isn't playing fairly, Xiang said. 'What we actually want, you refuse to sell us. For the things you already consider obsolete, you still want to dump them into our market and occupy our market. Do you really think we're that naive?' he said. Despite Beijing's concerns and the H20's reduced performance, the chips remain highly sought after by Chinese companies. Equity research firm Bernstein estimated that shipment of the chips to China this year would have reached 1.5 million units, or about 23 billion in revenue, without Trump's export restrictions. Major buyers include Chinese tech giants such as TikTok owner ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent. While Huawei's top AI chips excel in computing power – one of the key measures in evaluating processors' performance – in comparison with H20, they fall short in terms of memory bandwidth, which determines how much data can move between a chip's memory and computing unit. That bandwidth depends on a technology known as High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) used in AI chips to ensure efficient data transmission in AI model training. China's top HBM maker CXMT, or ChangXin Memory Technologies, is still about three to four years behind industry leaders like South Korea's SK Hynix and Samsung, and American Micron, according to MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, a research firm. Last year, the Biden administration further tightened export controls on China, including restrictions on HBM sales, forcing Chinese companies to rely on existing stockpiles. Beijing has requested Washington to lift restrictions on HBM as part of the trade deal negotiations, Financial Times reported this week. Key appeal of H20 for Chinese companies also lies in Huawei's limited production capacity and Nvidia's well-established ecosystem, said Qingyuan Lin, senior analyst at Bernstein focusing China's semiconductor industry. 'Even when you want to completely replace the H20 demand with the local guys, they're not able to deliver the amount of chips that's needed,' he said. The supply bottlenecks stem from constraints in scaling up production of both the manufacturing of computing units of the AI chips and the integration of various components in them, a technology known as advanced packaging in the industry, Lin said. Bernstein estimated that Huawei's shipments of its advanced AI chips in 2025 would amount to around 700,000 units, still far short of the demand in the country. CNN has reached out to Huawei for comment. Meanwhile, Nvidia's powerful ecosystem, which integrates its chips with its software platform, has created what experts call a 'moat,' making it difficult and costly for AI developers who train models on its software to switch to alternatives. 'The H20 comes with a complete ecosystem covering both hardware and software support, ensuring better compatibility and ease of integration,' said Brady Wang, associate director at Counterpoint. 'This ecosystem maturity is still a challenge for many Chinese-developed chips, making the H20 more attractive despite its cost disadvantage.' Still, experts said China's rapid progress in semiconductor technology should not be underestimated. Years of tightening export controls have injected both urgency and opportunity into Beijing's push for self-sufficiency, Lin said. While chipmaking technology appeared to stall after Huawei's 2023 flagship smartphone showcased advanced chips that American officials had deemed extremely difficult to produce, domestic chipmaking equipment companies have been steadily gaining ground, he said. 'The local guys actually had very little chance to gain share from the global players because of the technology gap, but export controls created a market that didn't exist before and accelerated the domestic substitution,' he said. Bernstein projects that the percentage of homemade AI chips in China will surge from 17% in 2023 to 55% by 2027, while American suppliers like Nvidia and AMD will shrink to 45% from 83%. In April, Huang of Nvidia met with Trump in Washington, urging the administration to loosen export controls on chips and saying that the diffusion of American AI technology around the world needs to be accelerated. 'There's no question that Huawei is one of the most formidable technology companies in the world…they made enormous progress in the last several years,' he said. 'China is right behind us. We're very, very close.' CNN's Hassan Tayir and Fred He contributed reporting.
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Prediction: Nvidia's New China Deal Will Be a Game-Changer. Here's Why
Key Points While most of Nvidia's revenue hails from the U.S. and Europe, the Chinese market represents an estimated $50 billion opportunity. Recent changes to tariff policies and export controls have stifled Nvidia's potential in China throughout 2025. Nvidia and the U.S. government have formed a deal structure that helps pave the way for Nvidia to reclaim dominance in the key Asian market. 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia › Although it's only August, 2025 has already played out like a modern-day Greek tragedy for semiconductor powerhouse Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Its year has been marked by a litany of setbacks, comebacks, and everything in between. Earlier this year, more than $1 trillion of Nvidia's market value was wiped out. Yet today, the company boasts a market cap of $4.4 trillion -- reclaiming the crown as the most valuable company in the world. At the center of Nvidia's headaches in 2025 is China -- and no, not because of DeepSeek. The real culprit has been a wave of sweeping tariff policies and export controls that have curtailed Nvidia's influence in the Chinese AI market. Now, after months of negotiations with regulators in Washington, it appears that the tide may be turning. Nvidia could be on the precipice of reestablishing its presence in one of its most crucial Asian markets. Let's unpack the details of Nvidia's new deal structure in China and examine why it should be celebrated as a massive win for investors. How big an opportunity is China for Nvidia? According to accounting and consulting firm Deloitte, the global total addressable market (TAM) for semiconductors, as measured by sales, reached $627 billion in 2024. Deloitte projects that the market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19% over the coming decades -- ultimately reaching $2 trillion by 2040. Outside of the U.S., China remains one of the most important markets fueling demand for high-performance chipsets, particularly graphics processing units (GPUs). Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has estimated that the AI opportunity in China alone could be worth as much as $50 billion. In 2024, Nvidia generated $130 billion in revenue, with China capturing roughly 13% of this sum. During the first quarter of 2025, Nvidia's $5.5 billion of China sales accounted for roughly 12.5% of total revenue. This leveling trend underscores how the current administration's policies toward China have started to constrain Nvidia's growth potential in the region. Why is Nvidia's new China deal so important? According to multiple news outlets, Nvidia has reached an agreement with Washington regarding its operation in China. Under the terms, Nvidia will pay 15% of its China-based sales to the U.S. government. In effect, the arrangement provides Nvidia with a pathway to penetrate this critical market through its tailored H20 chips. While this might initially resemble a tax, investors should avoid viewing it through that lens. First, the agreement applies to sales of Nvidia's AI chips rather than to profits, unlike traditional forms of taxation. Moreover, the 15% rate does not appear to be variable in structure like a royalty, which is typically tied to intellectual property (IP) and subject to fluctuate. While this deal might appear unusual at first glance, these structures are not without precedent in global business practices. For example, energy companies that extract natural resources or commodities in foreign countries often operate under similar revenue-sharing agreements with host nations in exchange for distribution rights. In my view, dedicating a modest share of sales to secure access to China represents a strategic trade-off. In the long run, it allows Nvidia to preserve its dominant position in one of the world's most important AI markets and prevents domestic rivals such as Huawei from eroding its competitive moat. Is Nvidia stock a buy? While Nvidia's forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has been expanding recently, levels remain muted compared to peaks reached previously during the AI revolution. In my view, part of this multiple compression reflects concerns surrounding China -- perhaps overly so. Nvidia's new agreement in Washington offers the company renewed momentum, securing revenue in a critical market without forfeiting much in the way of profits -- even with the 15% remittance to the U.S. government. Over the long term, I see this arrangement as a strategic mechanism for Nvidia to strengthen its position overseas and deliver durable growth across the global AI infrastructure market. As these fundamentals take hold, I think the company's valuation multiples could expand further, potentially driving the stock to new highs sooner than many investors may be expecting. For that reason, I see Nvidia stock as a no-brainer opportunity to buy hand over fist right now and hold for years to come. Do the experts think Nvidia is a buy right now? The Motley Fool's expert analyst team, drawing on years of investing experience and deep analysis of thousands of stocks, leverages our proprietary Moneyball AI investing database to uncover top opportunities. They've just revealed their to buy now — did Nvidia make the list? When our Stock Advisor analyst team has a stock recommendation, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor's total average return is up 1,070% vs. just 184% for the S&P — that is beating the market by 885.55%!* Imagine if you were a Stock Advisor member when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $668,155!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,106,071!* The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 13, 2025 Adam Spatacco has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Prediction: Nvidia's New China Deal Will Be a Game-Changer. Here's Why was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
