Latest news with #Liao
Business Wire
16 hours ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Hanabi AI Launches OpenAudio S1: The World's First AI Voice Actor for Real-Time Emotional Control
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hanabi AI, a pioneering voice technology startup, today announced OpenAudio S1, the world's first AI voice actor and a breakthrough generative voice model that delivers unprecedented real-time emotional and tonal control. Moving beyond the limitations of traditional text-to-speech solutions, OpenAudio S1 creates nuanced, emotionally authentic vocal output that captures the full spectrum of human expression. The OpenAudio S1 model is available in open beta today on for everyone to try for free. 'We believe the future of AI voice-driven storytelling isn't just about generating speech—it's about performance,' said Shijia Liao, founder and CEO of Hanabi AI. 'With OpenAudio S1, we're shaping what we see as the next creative frontier: AI voice acting.' From Synthesized Text-to-Speech Output to AI Voice Performance At the heart of OpenAudio S1's innovation is transforming voice from merely a functional tool into a core element of storytelling. Rather than treating speech as a scripted output to synthesize, Hanabi AI views it as a performance to direct—complete with emotional depth, intentional pacing, and expressive nuance. Whether it's the trembling hesitation of suppressed anxiety before delivering difficult news, or the fragile excitement of an unexpected reunion, OpenAudio S1 allows users to control and fine tune vocal intensity, emotional resonance, and prosody in real time making voice output not just sound realistic, but feel authentically human. 'Voice is one of the most powerful ways to convey emotion, yet it's the most nuanced, the hardest to replicate, and the key to making machines feel truly human,' Liao emphasized, 'But it's been stuck in a text-to-speech mindset for too long. Ultimately, the difference between machine-generated speech and human speech comes down to emotional authenticity. It's not just what you say but how you say it. OpenAudio S1 is the first AI speech model that gives creators the power to direct voice acting as if they were working with a real human actor.' State-of-the-Art Model Meets Controllability and Speed Hanabi AI fuels creative vision with a robust technical foundation. OpenAudio S1 is powered by an end-to-end architecture with 4 billion parameters, trained extensively on diverse text and audio datasets. This advanced setup empowers S1 to capture emotional nuance and vocal subtleties with remarkable accuracy. Fully integrated into the platform, S1 is accessible to a broad range of users—from creators generating long-form content in minutes to creative professionals fine-tuning every vocal inflection. According to third-party benchmarks from Hugging Face's TTS Arena, OpenAudio S1 demonstrated consistent gains across key benchmarks, outperforming ElevenLabs, OpenAI, and Cartesia in key areas: Expressiveness – S1 delivers more nuanced emotional expression and tonal variation, handling subtleties like sarcasm, joy, sadness, and fear with cinematic depth, unlike the limited emotional scope of current competing models. Ultra-low latency – S1 offers sub-100ms latency, making it ideal for real-time applications like gaming, voice assistants, and live content creation where immediate response time is crucial. Competitors, like Cartesia and OpenAI, still experience higher latency, resulting in a less natural, more robotic response in real-time interactive settings. Real-time fine-grained controllability – With S1, users can adjust tone, pitch, emotion, and pace in real time, using not only simple prompts such as (angry) or (voice quivering), but also a diverse range of more nuanced or creative instructions such as (confident but hiding fear) or (whispering with urgency). This allows for incredibly flexible and expressive voice generation tailored to a wide range of contexts and characters. State-of-the-art voice cloning – Accurately replicates a speaker's rhythm, pacing, and timbre. Multilingual, multi-speaker fluency – S1 seamlessly performs across 11 languages, excelling at handling multi-speaker environments (such as dialogues with multiple characters) in multilingual contexts, supporting seamless transitions between different languages without losing tonal consistency. Pioneering Research Vision For the Future OpenAudio S1 is just the first chapter. Hanabi's long-term mission is to build a true AI companion that doesn't just process information but connects with human emotion, intent, and presence. While many voice models today produce clear speech they still fall short of true emotional depth, and struggle to support the kind of trust, warmth, and natural interaction required of an AI companion. Instead of treating voice as an output layer, Hanabi treats it as the emotional core of the AI experience, because for an AI companion to feel natural, its voice must convey real feeling and connection. To bring this vision to life, Hanabi advances both research and product in parallel. The company operates through two complementary divisions: OpenAudio, Hanabi's internal research lab, focuses on developing breakthrough voice models and advancing emotional nuance, real-time control, and speech fidelity. Meanwhile, Fish Audio serves as Hanabi's product arm, delivering a portfolio of accessible applications that bring these technological advancements directly to consumers. Looking ahead, the company plans to progressively release core parts of OpenAudio's architecture, training pipeline, and inference stack to the public. Real-World Impact with Scalable Innovation With a four-people Gen Z founding team, the company scaled its annualized revenue from $400,000 to over $5 million between January and April 2025, while growing its MAU from 50,000 to 420,000 through Fish Audio's early products—including real-time performance tools and long-form audio generation. This traction reflects the team's ability to turn cutting-edge innovation into product experiences that resonate with a fast-growing creative community. The founder & CEO, Shijia Liao, has spent over seven years in the field and been active in open-source AI development. Prior to Fish Audio, he led or participated in the development of several widely adopted speech and singing voice synthesis models—including So-VITS-SVC, GPT-SoVITS, Bert-VITS2, and Fish Speech—which remain influential in the research and creative coding communities today. That open-source foundation built both the technical core and the community trust that now powers early commercial momentum. For a deeper dive into the research and philosophy behind OpenAudio S1, check out our launch blog post here: Pricing & Availability Premium Membership (unlimited generation on Fish Audio Playground): - $15 per month - $120 per year API: $15 per million UTF-8 bytes (approximately 20 hours of audio) About Hanabi AI Hanabi AI Inc. is pioneering the era of the AI Voice Actor —speech that you can direct as easily as video, shaping every inflection, pause, and emotion in real time. Built on our open-source roots, the Fish Audio platform gives filmmakers, streamers, and everyday creators frame-perfect control over how their stories sound.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hanabi AI Launches OpenAudio S1: The World's First AI Voice Actor for Real-Time Emotional Control
SAN FRANCISCO, June 04, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hanabi AI, a pioneering voice technology startup, today announced OpenAudio S1, the world's first AI voice actor and a breakthrough generative voice model that delivers unprecedented real-time emotional and tonal control. Moving beyond the limitations of traditional text-to-speech solutions, OpenAudio S1 creates nuanced, emotionally authentic vocal output that captures the full spectrum of human expression. The OpenAudio S1 model is available in open beta today on for everyone to try for free. "We believe the future of AI voice-driven storytelling isn't just about generating speech—it's about performance," said Shijia Liao, founder and CEO of Hanabi AI. "With OpenAudio S1, we're shaping what we see as the next creative frontier: AI voice acting." From Synthesized Text-to-Speech Output to AI Voice Performance At the heart of OpenAudio S1's innovation is transforming voice from merely a functional tool into a core element of storytelling. Rather than treating speech as a scripted output to synthesize, Hanabi AI views it as a performance to direct—complete with emotional depth, intentional pacing, and expressive nuance. Whether it's the trembling hesitation of suppressed anxiety before delivering difficult news, or the fragile excitement of an unexpected reunion, OpenAudio S1 allows users to control and fine tune vocal intensity, emotional resonance, and prosody in real time making voice output not just sound realistic, but feel authentically human. "Voice is one of the most powerful ways to convey emotion, yet it's the most nuanced, the hardest to replicate, and the key to making machines feel truly human," Liao emphasized, "But it's been stuck in a text-to-speech mindset for too long. Ultimately, the difference between machine-generated speech and human speech comes down to emotional authenticity. It's not just what you say but how you say it. OpenAudio S1 is the first AI speech model that gives creators the power to direct voice acting as if they were working with a real human actor." State-of-the-Art Model Meets Controllability and Speed Hanabi AI fuels creative vision with a robust technical foundation. OpenAudio S1 is powered by an end-to-end architecture with 4 billion parameters, trained extensively on diverse text and audio datasets. This advanced setup empowers S1 to capture emotional nuance and vocal subtleties with remarkable accuracy. Fully integrated into the platform, S1 is accessible to a broad range of users—from creators generating long-form content in minutes to creative professionals fine-tuning every vocal inflection. According to third-party benchmarks from Hugging Face's TTS Arena, OpenAudio S1 demonstrated consistent gains across key benchmarks, outperforming ElevenLabs, OpenAI, and Cartesia in key areas: Expressiveness – S1 delivers more nuanced emotional expression and tonal variation, handling subtleties like sarcasm, joy, sadness, and fear with cinematic depth, unlike the limited emotional scope of current competing models. Ultra-low latency – S1 offers sub-100ms latency, making it ideal for real-time applications like gaming, voice assistants, and live content creation where immediate response time is crucial. Competitors, like Cartesia and OpenAI, still experience higher latency, resulting in a less natural, more robotic response in real-time interactive settings. Real-time fine-grained controllability – With S1, users can adjust tone, pitch, emotion, and pace in real time, using not only simple prompts such as (angry) or (voice quivering), but also a diverse range of more nuanced or creative instructions such as (confident but hiding fear) or (whispering with urgency). This allows for incredibly flexible and expressive voice generation tailored to a wide range of contexts and characters. State-of-the-art voice cloning – Accurately replicates a speaker's rhythm, pacing, and timbre. Multilingual, multi-speaker fluency – S1 seamlessly performs across 11 languages, excelling at handling multi-speaker environments (such as dialogues with multiple characters) in multilingual contexts, supporting seamless transitions between different languages without losing tonal consistency. Pioneering Research Vision For the Future OpenAudio S1 is just the first chapter. Hanabi's long-term mission is to build a true AI companion that doesn't just process information but connects with human emotion, intent, and presence. While many voice models today produce clear speech they still fall short of true emotional depth, and struggle to support the kind of trust, warmth, and natural interaction required of an AI companion. Instead of treating voice as an output layer, Hanabi treats it as the emotional core of the AI experience, because for an AI companion to feel natural, its voice must convey real feeling and connection. To bring this vision to life, Hanabi advances both research and product in parallel. The company operates through two complementary divisions: OpenAudio, Hanabi's internal research lab, focuses on developing breakthrough voice models and advancing emotional nuance, real-time control, and speech fidelity. Meanwhile, Fish Audio serves as Hanabi's product arm, delivering a portfolio of accessible applications that bring these technological advancements directly to consumers. Looking ahead, the company plans to progressively release core parts of OpenAudio's architecture, training pipeline, and inference stack to the public. Real-World Impact with Scalable Innovation With a four-people Gen Z founding team, the company scaled its annualized revenue from $400,000 to over $5 million between January and April 2025, while growing its MAU from 50,000 to 420,000 through Fish Audio's early products—including real-time performance tools and long-form audio generation. This traction reflects the team's ability to turn cutting-edge innovation into product experiences that resonate with a fast-growing creative community. The founder & CEO, Shijia Liao, has spent over seven years in the field and been active in open-source AI development. Prior to Fish Audio, he led or participated in the development of several widely adopted speech and singing voice synthesis models—including So-VITS-SVC, GPT-SoVITS, Bert-VITS2, and Fish Speech—which remain influential in the research and creative coding communities today. That open-source foundation built both the technical core and the community trust that now powers early commercial momentum. For a deeper dive into the research and philosophy behind OpenAudio S1, check out our launch blog post here: Pricing & Availability Premium Membership (unlimited generation on Fish Audio Playground): - $15 per month- $120 per year API: $15 per million UTF-8 bytes (approximately 20 hours of audio) About Hanabi AI Hanabi AI Inc. is pioneering the era of the AI Voice Actor—speech that you can direct as easily as video, shaping every inflection, pause, and emotion in real time. Built on our open-source roots, the Fish Audio platform gives filmmakers, streamers, and everyday creators frame-perfect control over how their stories sound. View source version on Contacts Media Contact: Derek Huangdderekhuang@ Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hanabi AI Launches OpenAudio S1: The World's First AI Voice Actor for Real-Time Emotional Control
SAN FRANCISCO, June 04, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hanabi AI, a pioneering voice technology startup, today announced OpenAudio S1, the world's first AI voice actor and a breakthrough generative voice model that delivers unprecedented real-time emotional and tonal control. Moving beyond the limitations of traditional text-to-speech solutions, OpenAudio S1 creates nuanced, emotionally authentic vocal output that captures the full spectrum of human expression. The OpenAudio S1 model is available in open beta today on for everyone to try for free. "We believe the future of AI voice-driven storytelling isn't just about generating speech—it's about performance," said Shijia Liao, founder and CEO of Hanabi AI. "With OpenAudio S1, we're shaping what we see as the next creative frontier: AI voice acting." From Synthesized Text-to-Speech Output to AI Voice Performance At the heart of OpenAudio S1's innovation is transforming voice from merely a functional tool into a core element of storytelling. Rather than treating speech as a scripted output to synthesize, Hanabi AI views it as a performance to direct—complete with emotional depth, intentional pacing, and expressive nuance. Whether it's the trembling hesitation of suppressed anxiety before delivering difficult news, or the fragile excitement of an unexpected reunion, OpenAudio S1 allows users to control and fine tune vocal intensity, emotional resonance, and prosody in real time making voice output not just sound realistic, but feel authentically human. "Voice is one of the most powerful ways to convey emotion, yet it's the most nuanced, the hardest to replicate, and the key to making machines feel truly human," Liao emphasized, "But it's been stuck in a text-to-speech mindset for too long. Ultimately, the difference between machine-generated speech and human speech comes down to emotional authenticity. It's not just what you say but how you say it. OpenAudio S1 is the first AI speech model that gives creators the power to direct voice acting as if they were working with a real human actor." State-of-the-Art Model Meets Controllability and Speed Hanabi AI fuels creative vision with a robust technical foundation. OpenAudio S1 is powered by an end-to-end architecture with 4 billion parameters, trained extensively on diverse text and audio datasets. This advanced setup empowers S1 to capture emotional nuance and vocal subtleties with remarkable accuracy. Fully integrated into the platform, S1 is accessible to a broad range of users—from creators generating long-form content in minutes to creative professionals fine-tuning every vocal inflection. According to third-party benchmarks from Hugging Face's TTS Arena, OpenAudio S1 demonstrated consistent gains across key benchmarks, outperforming ElevenLabs, OpenAI, and Cartesia in key areas: Expressiveness – S1 delivers more nuanced emotional expression and tonal variation, handling subtleties like sarcasm, joy, sadness, and fear with cinematic depth, unlike the limited emotional scope of current competing models. Ultra-low latency – S1 offers sub-100ms latency, making it ideal for real-time applications like gaming, voice assistants, and live content creation where immediate response time is crucial. Competitors, like Cartesia and OpenAI, still experience higher latency, resulting in a less natural, more robotic response in real-time interactive settings. Real-time fine-grained controllability – With S1, users can adjust tone, pitch, emotion, and pace in real time, using not only simple prompts such as (angry) or (voice quivering), but also a diverse range of more nuanced or creative instructions such as (confident but hiding fear) or (whispering with urgency). This allows for incredibly flexible and expressive voice generation tailored to a wide range of contexts and characters. State-of-the-art voice cloning – Accurately replicates a speaker's rhythm, pacing, and timbre. Multilingual, multi-speaker fluency – S1 seamlessly performs across 11 languages, excelling at handling multi-speaker environments (such as dialogues with multiple characters) in multilingual contexts, supporting seamless transitions between different languages without losing tonal consistency. Pioneering Research Vision For the Future OpenAudio S1 is just the first chapter. Hanabi's long-term mission is to build a true AI companion that doesn't just process information but connects with human emotion, intent, and presence. While many voice models today produce clear speech they still fall short of true emotional depth, and struggle to support the kind of trust, warmth, and natural interaction required of an AI companion. Instead of treating voice as an output layer, Hanabi treats it as the emotional core of the AI experience, because for an AI companion to feel natural, its voice must convey real feeling and connection. To bring this vision to life, Hanabi advances both research and product in parallel. The company operates through two complementary divisions: OpenAudio, Hanabi's internal research lab, focuses on developing breakthrough voice models and advancing emotional nuance, real-time control, and speech fidelity. Meanwhile, Fish Audio serves as Hanabi's product arm, delivering a portfolio of accessible applications that bring these technological advancements directly to consumers. Looking ahead, the company plans to progressively release core parts of OpenAudio's architecture, training pipeline, and inference stack to the public. Real-World Impact with Scalable Innovation With a four-people Gen Z founding team, the company scaled its annualized revenue from $400,000 to over $5 million between January and April 2025, while growing its MAU from 50,000 to 420,000 through Fish Audio's early products—including real-time performance tools and long-form audio generation. This traction reflects the team's ability to turn cutting-edge innovation into product experiences that resonate with a fast-growing creative community. The founder & CEO, Shijia Liao, has spent over seven years in the field and been active in open-source AI development. Prior to Fish Audio, he led or participated in the development of several widely adopted speech and singing voice synthesis models—including So-VITS-SVC, GPT-SoVITS, Bert-VITS2, and Fish Speech—which remain influential in the research and creative coding communities today. That open-source foundation built both the technical core and the community trust that now powers early commercial momentum. For a deeper dive into the research and philosophy behind OpenAudio S1, check out our launch blog post here: Pricing & Availability Premium Membership (unlimited generation on Fish Audio Playground): - $15 per month- $120 per year API: $15 per million UTF-8 bytes (approximately 20 hours of audio) About Hanabi AI Hanabi AI Inc. is pioneering the era of the AI Voice Actor—speech that you can direct as easily as video, shaping every inflection, pause, and emotion in real time. Built on our open-source roots, the Fish Audio platform gives filmmakers, streamers, and everyday creators frame-perfect control over how their stories sound. View source version on Contacts Media Contact: Derek Huangdderekhuang@ Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Hamilton Spectator
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
‘Resurgence of WAGs': Sport researchers say spouses of athletes growing in popularity
EDMONTON - A new business in a historic downtown Edmonton building is generating some major buzz. Several social media influencers recently walked a red carpet leading into Bar Trove and the Trove Living furniture showroom for a media tour ahead of its June 6 opening. They ate oysters and sipped cocktails as a DJ played music and security guards stood outside. The woman behind the venture, seen at the event clad in a glittery pink dress, is Lauren Kyle McDavid, the wife of Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid. 'To have this star's wife putting money into our city and investing in our city is really special,' said Quinn Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Edmonton Downtown Business Association and a former sports reporter. 'Everything is kind of buzzing now in downtown.' Kyle McDavid was not immediately available for an interview, but she is one of several modern WAGs — an acronym for wives and girlfriends — making names for themselves. Judy Liao, who teaches sociology of sport and gender studies at the University of Alberta, says the buzz Kyle McDavid's business has been getting online shows how much of an interest people take in the lives of athletes' significant others. During the COVID-19 pandemic, sports wives saw their social media followers go up as they began posting more, Liao says. The popular streaming service Netflix has also created shows following the lives of WAGs in recent years. 'The resurgence of WAGs is really because of social media.' Liao says the WAG trend first became popular in the early 2000s. '(Soccer star) David Beckham is a key person to think about in this phenomenon because his wife is Posh Spice,' she says, referring to British singer Victoria Beckham of the Spice Girls. 'After they started dating, they officially entered their pop culture celebrity status. Posh Spice was already a celebrity. They became so iconic, recognizable, so visible, it becomes not just about soccer or football anymore.' Demand for more details on their lifestyle went up as tabloid magazines chased them around and gathered details that made the couple prime subjects of media gossip, Liao said. 'It was the modern fairy tale. The story is so enticing,' she said. The era was different from today, she says, as the Beckhams didn't release details about their lifestyle on their own. Fast-forward to 2025, and WAGs are gaining visibility with social media and online content created by the influencers themselves, Liao says. Most of the resurgence has been in the United States, but Canada isn't immune to the trend. Stephanie LaChance, who is married to Toronto Maple Leafs star forward Mitch Marner, is often the subject of headlines. In the United States, pop star Taylor Swift has been labelled the ultimate WAG in news headlines for her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelce. Liao says some sport sociologists have been calling Swift the 'Yoko Ono of the NFL' because of how many women she has attracted to the game. Unlike the Beckhams, Liao says modern WAGs can control their narratives and tend to blend social media posts about sports with entries about their lives. 'Social media is a really important place to construct and show people themselves as a person, not just a profession,' she says. Young fans of McDavid who are avid social media users are happy to follow WAGs, she adds. Cheri Bradish, director of the Future of Sport Lab, says Kyle McDavid's fame is an interesting case study. 'Lauren is very active on social media,' Bradish says. 'There were many videos of her wedding, which Vogue covered.' She has also posted about the interior design firm she founded, Kyle & Co Design Studio, and regularly shares photos of the apparel she develops for Sports Club Atelier with Oilers branding. Bradish says Kyle McDavid's ties to the NHL have helped her monetize her work. 'Social media has really created opportunities, and it's not surprising,' Bradish says. 'She's a part of this whole community and whole industry of influencers.' Bradish also saw the WAG resurgence really take off during the COVID-19 pandemic. 'The sports industry, and athletes in particular, needed to figure out ways to speak with fans and consumers,' she says. But Brandish has mixed feelings about how trendy they've become. Some WAGs like Kyle McDavid have used their relationships as leverage, but Brandish says she should also be commended for her personal identity and professional background in interior design and business. 'The bigger picture here, in an authentic way, is that social media has really created opportunities. This interest from consumers in the WAG story is really powerful.' 'The rising of WAGs is one big factor for that.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2025.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
'Resurgence of WAGs': Sport researchers say spouses of athletes growing in popularity
EDMONTON — A new business in a historic downtown Edmonton building is generating some major buzz. Several social media influencers recently walked a red carpet leading into Bar Trove and the Trove Living furniture showroom for a media tour ahead of its June 6 opening. They ate oysters and sipped cocktails as a DJ played music and security guards stood outside. The woman behind the venture, seen at the event clad in a glittery pink dress, is Lauren Kyle McDavid, the wife of Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid. "To have this star's wife putting money into our city and investing in our city is really special," said Quinn Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Edmonton Downtown Business Association and a former sports reporter. "Everything is kind of buzzing now in downtown." Kyle McDavid was not immediately available for an interview, but she is one of several modern WAGs — an acronym for wives and girlfriends — making names for themselves. Judy Liao, who teaches sociology of sport and gender studies at the University of Alberta, says the buzz Kyle McDavid's business has been getting online shows how much of an interest people take in the lives of athletes' significant others. During the COVID-19 pandemic, sports wives saw their social media followers go up as they began posting more, Liao says. The popular streaming service Netflix has also created shows following the lives of WAGs in recent years. "The resurgence of WAGs is really because of social media." Liao says the WAG trend first became popular in the early 2000s. "(Soccer star) David Beckham is a key person to think about in this phenomenon because his wife is Posh Spice," she says, referring to British singer Victoria Beckham of the Spice Girls. "After they started dating, they officially entered their pop culture celebrity status. Posh Spice was already a celebrity. They became so iconic, recognizable, so visible, it becomes not just about soccer or football anymore." Demand for more details on their lifestyle went up as tabloid magazines chased them around and gathered details that made the couple prime subjects of media gossip, Liao said. "It was the modern fairy tale. The story is so enticing," she said. The era was different from today, she says, as the Beckhams didn't release details about their lifestyle on their own. Fast-forward to 2025, and WAGs are gaining visibility with social media and online content created by the influencers themselves, Liao says. Most of the resurgence has been in the United States, but Canada isn't immune to the trend. Stephanie LaChance, who is married to Toronto Maple Leafs star forward Mitch Marner, is often the subject of headlines. In the United States, pop star Taylor Swift has been labelled the ultimate WAG in news headlines for her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelce. Liao says some sport sociologists have been calling Swift the "Yoko Ono of the NFL" because of how many women she has attracted to the game. Unlike the Beckhams, Liao says modern WAGs can control their narratives and tend to blend social media posts about sports with entries about their lives. "Social media is a really important place to construct and show people themselves as a person, not just a profession," she says. Young fans of McDavid who are avid social media users are happy to follow WAGs, she adds. Cheri Bradish, director of the Future of Sport Lab, says Kyle McDavid's fame is an interesting case study. "Lauren is very active on social media," Bradish says. "There were many videos of her wedding, which Vogue covered." She has also posted about the interior design firm she founded, Kyle & Co Design Studio, and regularly shares photos of the apparel she develops for Sports Club Atelier with Oilers branding. Bradish says Kyle McDavid's ties to the NHL have helped her monetize her work. "Social media has really created opportunities, and it's not surprising," Bradish says. "She's a part of this whole community and whole industry of influencers." Bradish also saw the WAG resurgence really take off during the COVID-19 pandemic. "The sports industry, and athletes in particular, needed to figure out ways to speak with fans and consumers," she says. But Brandish has mixed feelings about how trendy they've become. Some WAGs like Kyle McDavid have used their relationships as leverage, but Brandish says she should also be commended for her personal identity and professional background in interior design and business. "The bigger picture here, in an authentic way, is that social media has really created opportunities. This interest from consumers in the WAG story is really powerful." "The rising of WAGs is one big factor for that." This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 1, 2025. Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
