ANS Start-Up Stars: Minutia.ai talks revolutionizing sports nutrition with personalized microbial insights

Now operating across Europe, the start-up analyzes a wide range of data—including stool samples, blood work and clinical questionnaires.

This information is used to create a ‘digital twin’ of an athlete’s gut microbiome to forecast responses to specific interventions with the aim of enhancing athletic performance and reducing the risk of injury.

The application can predict the effectiveness of supplements or nutritional strategies, allowing the team to make personalized dietary recommendations. These simulations extend to individual bacterial interactions and underlying mechanisms.

Here, co-founder Silvia Barbaresi discusses how Minutia.ai got its start, the challenges and barriers, and long-term goals for the future.

NutraIngredients (NI): Could you share a bit about your background?

Silvia Barbaresi (SI): I have a slightly different academic background compared to most of my colleagues at Minutia.ai. My first degree was in biotechnology, but after a few years, I began to look into nutrition and metabolism and ended up undertaking a PhD in sports nutrition.

At the time, I studied peptides coming from meat and fish and how they could improve performance. I was running clinical trials and noticed that we often had a significant split between responders and non-responders, so I began exploring whether the gut microbiome could be responsible for this.

I dug deeper, publishing several research papers and a book on sports nutrition and the gut microbiome. Now, I’m considered an expert in the field because of my passion and my ability to study and recycle knowledge.

NI: How did Minutia.ai get its start?

SI: Minutia.ai has two branches. The first one was set up in Singapore six years ago, with this unit primarily developing technology to apply to the infant nutrition space. A couple of years ago, the co-founders contacted me regarding an opportunity to open up Minutia.ai to the European market, with a plan to tackle the sports nutrition space.

We noticed there was a real gap in the market in this sector. As most microbiome applications only rely on biomarkers, we wanted to go one step further and create a mechanistic model which would look at how bacteria interact and their functionality.

While our sports performance unit has roots in Dubai, our operations span Europe and beyond, with clients in Spain, Switzerland and Poland, as well as the U.S.

NI: What need/opportunity did you identify in the sports nutrition space?

SI: We know that the gut microbiome is connected to many important aspects when it comes to sport, yet there is a huge gap in the literature. Our plan is to gather a lot of data and create a ‘healthy model’ or a ‘digital twin’ replication of an athlete.

We have chosen to study athletes for a number of reasons. Firstly because they are healthy subjects, but also because they are quite controlled in terms of what they eat, their lifestyle and their training plans.

Eventually, we want to extrapolate this information and apply this model to the general population, shedding light on how we can all live longer, healthier lives.

NI: Who is Minutia.ai’s target customer?

SI: We are a B2B company, so instead of having individual customers, we work with clients—mostly clinics, sports clubs and longevity resorts.

At the moment, our focus is predominantly on football players and endurance athletes, like marathon runners and triathletes. Eventually, we would like to look at swimmers too. We have chosen these groups because we have more information from the literature regarding the connection between the gut microbiome and performance metrics.

At this point in time, we are currently working with both professional and recreational athletes. Professional athletes are great subjects to work with, they are tested very often and very comprehensively. On the other hand, elite athletes are also quite complicated to deal with. They have strict diets and lifestyles to adhere to, and they have seasons where they can’t be very flexible. That’s why we also work with recreational athletes (e.g., medium to high-level trained student athletes) which provide us more flexibility and lots of data.

NI: Can you tell me about some of the challenges you have faced as a start-up?

SI: As a self-funded and bootstrapped start-up, it is often hard to operate with limited resources. Sometimes we feel that other companies with less sophisticated approaches receive more recognition or visibility simply because they can allocate large amounts of resources to marketing and outreach events, something we are currently approaching in a more cautious way.

However, being bootstrapped has forced us to set up a very lean and efficient structure. Everyone on the team pulls their weight, and we are compelled to focus only on the things and breakthroughs that truly matter to create a competitive advantage.

NI: What sets Minutia.ai apart from other companies?

SI: There are not many companies which are studying the connection between the gut microbiome and healthy athletes at such a granular level. Understanding this connection will unlock the door to many opportunities in the sports field, from boosting performance and preventing injuries to reducing inflammation and managing stress.

We are also creating new knowledge. We have just completed an in-house randomized, placebo-controlled trial with some of our athletes. This trial is testing a new nutritional intervention and whether it improves inflammation, performance and various other outcomes.

We have created something new that is very pioneering. Our ability to connect AI to the field of sports and performance and create ‘digital twins’ can generate candidate interventions that are completely unique to the individual.

NI: What is next for Minutia.ai? What are your long-term goals for the company?

SI: We are building the largest database in the world focused on the microbiome and athletic performance, and we plan to continue advancing along this path. The further we go, the more accurate our digital twins will become, until the connection between gut microbiome status and sports performance becomes too clear to be ignored. At that point, we expect that all professional sports teams and organizations will need to actively manage the status of the microbiome of their athletes, and hopefully they will do that using Minutia.ai’s approach.

Eventually, we would also like to work with wearables, so clients can upload all of their information—their blood work, nutritional information, training regime, et cetera—and continuously track their markers. I also see potential for a good synergy with sports companies selling or supporting this kind of triangulation.

NI: Do you have any advice for other start-ups?

SI: You need to be very passionate. Your passion is your fuel. There are so many discouraging moments and difficulties, and it’s not always rewarding. It can be stressful, but if you are focused on your goal and patient, you will succeed.

I always remind myself to enjoy the journey—each step is necessary to reach the next. We have to remind ourselves of where we have come from and congratulate ourselves for what we have achieved so far.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.