About VO2 Labs

VO2 Labs was founded by Kai Morales and Daniel Nguyen, two students who met in high school in Northern Virginia and kept building together.

Kai studies Economics and Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he works in human performance research and sports analytics. Daniel studies Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Virginia, where he conducts machine learning research in oncology and medical AI. Together, they won Best AI for Decision Support at Carnegie Mellon's TartanHacks 2026 for an early version of what became VO2 Labs.

The idea came from a frustration they kept hearing. Independent performance coaches, the ones working with serious athletes out of private gyms and not professional organizations, were doing genuinely sophisticated work. Programming, periodization, recovery tracking, long-term athlete development. But the software available to them was either built for enterprise sports teams with full analytics staffs, or it was generic fitness apps that treated coaching like a consumer product. Nothing in between.

The data coaches needed existed. The research existed. WHOOP, Oura, Garmin, athletes were already wearing devices and generating meaningful physiological signals. But there was no system that took that data, applied real sports science to it, and gave a coach something actionable without requiring them to become a data analyst on top of everything else they were already doing.

That's the gap VO2 Labs was built to close. The platform pulls wearable data, runs it against peer-reviewed research, and surfaces insights a coach can actually use, automatically, between sessions, without extra work. The goal is simple: give independent coaches the analytical infrastructure that professional organizations take for granted, at a price point that makes sense for a one-person business.

They believe the best coaches in the world aren't all working in the NFL. Some of them are running their own programs, building something independent, and doing it without the resources they deserve. VO2 Labs is built for them.