LONDON—October 11, 2024—Pioneering AI advances developed by Bain & Company are being harnessed by Britain’s team of world-class women sailors in their bid to make sporting history by winning the inaugural Women’s America’s Cup in this weekend’s finals at the pinnacle of global sailing competition.

Bain is partnering with Athena Pathway and its sailing teams, Britain’s entrants in the Women’s and Youth America’s Cup races, to bring state-of-the-art AI technology to power their challenges for victory in the world’s oldest sporting trophy contest, with this year marking the first-ever women’s race in the competition. Watch the video here.

Athena Pathway was founded by the British sailing champions Hannah Mills OBE and Sir Ben Ainslie, the world most decorated Olympic sailors, to change the landscape of competitive high-performance sailing by bringing diversity and equal opportunities to the sport in the UK. Britain’s Athena Pathway teams in the Women’s and Youth America’s Cup include women sailors and youth sailing talent with a collective six Olympic medals and 22 sailing World Championship medals. They are competing against crews from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand.

Bain & Company’s Advanced Analytics Group, the firm’s AI practice, and a team of expert Bain consultants have worked in close collaboration with Athena Pathway sailors, coaches and teams at its base in Barcelona and remotely, to develop and deploy unique AI-powered simulation tools and technology to enhance and optimise the performance of the Athena Pathway teams in their bid for America’s Cup wins.

The AI technology developed by Bain for Athena Pathway exploits detailed race performance data pulled from sensors fitted on the specialised, high-performance AC-40 yachts used in the America’s Cup racing – a new class of one-design foiling monohull yacht designed to ensure teams secure wins based entirely on the talent, technique and skills of competing crews.

Harnessing the data captured from race trials, practices and early phases of the America’s Cup competition, the unique AI technology from Bain enables sophisticated analysis by the Athena Pathway teams  supported and advised by Bain’s expert consultants, to maximise speed and optimise manoeuvres on the water, enhancing sailing efficiency in the high-speed racing and helping to achieve the best overall race performance. AI-powered simulations allow the Athena Pathway teams the test multiple “what if” race scenarios onshore during training, saving time versus testing these on the water, as well as adjusting real-time decision-making in simulated race conditions on the water.

Hannah Mills, Athena Pathway’s co-founder and Team Principal at the yacht’s helm in the women’s races, said: “Using AI to really help us learn and evolve and upskill very quickly has been a huge part of our training in preparation for the America’s Cup. Bain’s partnership with us has been integral to trying to achieve our goal of winning. When I look at what Bain has been doing with us, particularly on the ground, I’ve never had a partnership quite like it.”

The AI simulations, driven by Bain’s custom-built deep-learning AI model, unique to this project, acts as a ‘digital twin’ of Athena Pathway’s real-life AC40s yachts. This enables the crews to optimise so-called “velocity made good” (VMG), a key driver of race performance, for the yachts using interactive mapping enabling visualisation of both past, real sailing manoeuvres as well as simulated scenarios the teams want to test out. The AI models, pulling from around six million individual data observations captured by the sensors used, across more than 40 types of input variable, provide instantaneous feedback and real-time insights on specific scenarios of interest to the teams as they plan their race tactics and strategy.

Chris Draper, head coach for Athena Pathway, added: “Having the AI tools and being able to share that collaboratively has been enormous for us. It really has been a game-changing relationship. We’ve got sensors throughout the boats that give us direct feedback on how things are moving, the loads and strains, so you can identify exactly what is happening. We’re literally learning every day how to optimize performance and the AI tool is enabling us to do that, providing us with really, really interesting results. It thinks slightly outside of the box and it’s proving exceptionally useful for us.”

Discussing the partnership with Athena Pathway, Hugo Parkinson, Bain senior partner and leader of the firm’s Advanced Manufacturing practice in EMEA, said: “We are hugely excited to have partnered with Athena Pathway in this ground-breaking way. The unique AI tools we’ve been able to bring to their challenge in the America’s Cup is pioneering and is helping the teams solve some of their biggest challenges in the racing. It’s learned how to sail the boat and now it makes a series of AI-powered recommendations on how to sail it faster. Being able to bring this sort of advanced analytics to such an exciting environment is incredibly helpful in furthering the ambitions of Athena Pathway in this top-tier sport. For us at Bain, there’s also the tremendous benefit of what we’ve learned through this collaboration where we’ve been able to identify multiple real-world applications for this technology in all kinds of business use cases.”

In addition to backing Athena Pathway’s challenge for the America’s Cup with AI technology, Bain has also worked with the teams, and their coaches and leaders, to enhance their operations at their Barcelona base in multiple additional ways, with Bain support for optimising teamwork, help with upgrades to IT systems, onshore base efficiencies and planning, and improved documentation in the teams’ playbooks.

Juan Carlos Gay, Bain senior partner in the firm’s Energy & Natural Resources practice and global Head of the Capital Projects Acceleration team, who co-led Bain’s Athena Pathway collaboration with Hugo Parkinson, added: “Our partnership with Athena Pathway has been a tremendous opportunity to bring our technological and AI capabilities, and our deep business expertise in a wider range of ways, to this thrilling realm – competitive yacht racing – outside of the business world. Bain champions diversity in everything we do, which is core to our mission, so it’s been particularly inspiring for us and Athena Pathway to come together in support of the young and female talent competing in this inaugural Women’s America’s Cup race.”

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Media contacts 

To arrange an interview or for any questions, please contact:

Gary Duncan (London) — Email: gary.duncan@bain.com

Katie Ware (New York) — Email: katie.ware@bain.com

Ann Lee (Singapore) — Email: ann.lee@bain.com

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