Recorded one day before EGYM announced its merger. Co-founder and CTO Florian Sauter on why the AI is not a language model.

Recorded in January 2026.

Every fitness technology conversation in 2026 starts with large language models. Florian Sauter runs the technology at EGYM and says that is not what the company builds with. On his account the core product sits on classical machine learning over structured data, and the hard input is not workout data at all. It is hard assessment data from equipment.

Sauter is co-founder and chief technology officer at EGYM, the Munich connected-equipment and gym software business. He has held the role for around fifteen years, from a single room to a company that on 31 March 2026 completed a merger with Playlist, the parent of Mindbody, ClassPass and Booker, in a deal the companies put at 7.5 billion dollars enterprise value with 785 million dollars of new equity. This conversation was recorded on 14 January 2026, the day before that merger was announced.

In this conversation:

- Why EGYM Genius runs on classical machine learning rather than large language models

- Why assessment data, not workout data, is the input that closes the loop

- What member care looks like in a gym segment that carries no staff

- Why a training plan has no single outcome to optimise for

- What combining hardware and software actually buys a product team

Links:

• Florian Sauter on LinkedIn
• EGYM
• Natalia Karbasova on LinkedIn
• Tomorrow Health
• Apply to join FitTech Club

Chapters:

00:00 The gyms with nobody on the floor

00:25 Three things to listen for, and what happened the next day

01:37 Fifteen years, from a single room

02:49 EGYM Genius and the average member

03:55 Why assessment data is the hard part

05:04 Less generative AI, more machine learning

06:54 The Fitness Hub and computer vision

07:33 A training plan has no single right answer

08:53 Everything in house

09:11 Member care with no staff on the floor

10:24 Copilots, and mixed results

11:15 What hardware plus software actually buys you

12:09 Fitness converging with health

13:41 The problem AI will never solve

14:06 Build value, technology follows