🎙️ Upside Chat with David Dunne, CEO, Hexis, an Intelligence Nutrition Platform to Enhancing Athletes' Performance.

Today we have the honor of interviewing David Dunne, the CEO of Hexis, an intelligence nutrition platform to enhance performance.

Hexis is an AI-driven personalized nutrition platform designed to optimize athletic performance through its proprietary "Carb Coding™" system. Developed by experts in sports nutrition, exercise physiology, and data science, Hexis creates individualized fueling plans that adapt in real-time to an athlete's workouts, lifestyle, and goals.

By analyzing billions of variables, the platform provides minute-by-minute carbohydrate and energy recommendations, enhancing training efficiency, recovery, and body composition management. Hexis integrates with fitness tools like TrainingPeaks and Apple Health, offering features such as live energy tracking, flexible meal planning, and simplified food logging. Trusted by elite athletes and teams—including Olympic medalists, professional cycling teams, and clubs like Southampton FC—Hexis aims to make advanced, science-backed nutrition accessible to athletes at all levels

Picture: Hexis’ mobile app

Picture: Hexis’ team dashboard

Here is a video introducing Hexis’ The Coach Hub:

Here is a video about the Hexis' partnership with Q36.5 Pro Cycling team:

Customers / partners: Olympic teams, pro rugby teams, Premier League clubs, pro cycling teams, etc.

📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on his background, his company and product, the benefits for sports organizations and teams to use his nutritional platform. We also talked about his competitive advantage, business model, and his plans for the next 12 months.

You can read the full transcript of the podcast interview with David located at the top of this blog post.

Here are the quotes from the interview with David:

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Q1. Can you share the personal or professional journey that led you to launch Hexis, and what problem in sports nutrition you were most driven to solve?

“My background is as a sports nutrition practitioner. I was fortunate to get hands-on experience during my undergraduate years, working with elite teams like the Irish rugby team and Harlequins. From about 2012, I was immersed in elite sport—Premier League, Olympic teams—and I realized a huge problem. I was one person working with dozens of athletes, and I couldn’t provide truly personalized and periodized support at scale. There was only so much time and capacity I had. Around that same time, I noticed a shift—athletes were increasingly looking to their phones and social media for real-time answers instead of institutional guidance. That signaled a major opportunity to do things differently. I didn’t plan to build a platform right away. I just wanted to understand the gap better. So I self-funded a PhD to explore behavior change, design thinking, and tech integration. What we discovered through that research was eye-opening: a clear mismatch between what practitioners could deliver and what athletes truly needed—something scalable, continuous, and personalized in real-time. That’s the problem Hexis set out to solve—not just for athletes, but for practitioners like me who needed a better way to deliver care.”

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Q2. For those unfamiliar with Hexis, what exactly does the platform do, and how does it translate the latest nutritional science into personalized, actionable guidance for athletes?

“At the core of Hexis is the principle that no two athletes—and no two training days—are the same. You can’t make a precise nutritional recommendation unless you know the type, intensity, and duration of the athlete’s training, combined with their goals, recent sessions, recovery needs, and available time to recover. We gather all that data—biometric, lifestyle, and performance—and we translate it into real-time, meal-by-meal nutrition guidance. For example, our platform adjusts carbohydrate and energy intake before, during, and after training, based on exact outputs from wearables, GPS, and training plans. It integrates with platforms like TrainingPeaks, Catapult, and more. When an athlete opens the app, they see what type of meal they need—low, medium, or high-carb—and what specific food options fit. If plans change (which they often do), the platform adapts immediately. Our goal is to give each athlete the exact guidance they need, when they need it—and to give practitioners the power to do that at scale, across full squads.”

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Q3. What kinds of benefits have pro or collegiate teams seen from using Hexis, both from a performance and operational standpoint?

“The benefit of getting nutrition right is that it amplifies everything—training intensity, recovery, adaptation, long-term performance. What we’ve consistently seen is that when athletes fuel correctly before, during, and after training, they perform better and recover faster. But one of the most impactful outcomes has actually been psychological: athletes telling us they feel confident and in control for the first time. In our initial study with 963 elite athletes—54% of whom were women—we had some athletes report regaining their menstrual cycle after years without it, simply by following our fueling recommendations. That’s not just performance; that’s core physiological health. And operationally, for teams, it means less guesswork, more standardization, and far better scalability of care. Nutritionists can now deliver individualized support to dozens of athletes daily without needing hours of one-on-one planning.”

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Q4. With other nutrition tracking or planning tools on the market, what’s Hexis’ biggest differentiator — and how do you think about staying ahead of the curve?

“Hexis is built on our proprietary Carb Coding™ system, which is totally unique. This system automatically analyzes training loads and maps them to real-time nutritional needs. What would typically take a nutritionist hours of planning per athlete, we can do in seconds for an entire team. It’s not just about tracking food or providing general advice—we deliver deeply personalized, periodized nutrition support that adapts with the athlete. That’s what makes us different. And we stay ahead by constantly listening. I’m a practitioner, and so are many on our team—we’re building for our peers, not just for ‘users.’ Our product roadmap is shaped by feedback from Olympic medalists, Premier League nutritionists, and collegiate sports scientists. That closeness to our community keeps us honest and innovative.”

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Q5. Who are your customers?

“We serve both athletes and practitioners. On the athlete side, we have a mobile app where they receive daily, personalized, periodized fueling plans. It’s their day-to-day performance tool. On the practitioner side—nutritionists, heads of performance, sports scientists—we have a desktop platform that gives them visibility, control, and the ability to scale high-touch care across large squads. Our typical users range from Olympic teams to Premier League clubs to elite cycling squads. Whether it's a single athlete managing their own nutrition or a team staff member overseeing 30 players, our system is built to deliver impact across those use cases.”

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Q6. What is your business model?

“Hexis is a subscription-based platform sold on a per-seat basis. We offer two tiers: our Essential version uses our algorithms to drive most of the recommendations, but also allows customization. Our Premium tier offers deeper controls for practitioners—more flexibility, more insight, and more ways to personalize the experience. But really, our process always starts with a conversation. We take time to understand the organization’s goals, needs, and constraints, and then we propose the best fit. I still see myself as a qualitative researcher—I want to understand the ‘why’ before we prescribe a solution.”

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Q7. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, what are your key priorities — whether that’s new features, partnerships, markets, or scientific advancements?

“We’re deeply focused on product-led growth. In June, we’re launching new integrations with Catapult and STATSports—this allows teams to bring in detailed load data automatically. We’re also releasing our new Trends feature, which gives teams actionable insights on athlete behavior, nutrition adherence, and body composition over time. Between now and the end of the year, a big priority is expanding our use of AI—both to enhance the insights athletes and practitioners receive and to automate more of the manual, time-consuming work that staff currently face. On the commercial side, we’re looking to deepen our presence in UK football, expand across Europe and the MLS, and increase our footprint in pro cycling. Hexis is already in some Tour de France teams, but we want to serve the entire pro peloton.”

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Q8. What is the best way to contact you?

“Anyone interested can reach out directly to us at info@hexis.live. We’re always happy to set up a call to understand what you're working on, what problems you’re facing, and how we can help. Whether you're a team looking to upgrade your nutrition workflows or an athlete looking for clarity and control, we’re here to support.”

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