Ep. 179 features Ryan Murphy of SharpSports and Vijay Dewan from Pine Sports, who sit down to talk through their recent merger to form the new Pine Sports, a full-stack sports data and AI company serving both bettors and B2B partners.   Hear them discuss: • The origin story and strategic rationale behind the Pine Sports and SharpSports merger• How mutual investor Chris Grove sparked the deal by introducing the two founders• How the merger combines SharpSports’ B2B infrastructure with Pine Sports’ consumer-facing AI tools• Why clean data pipelines are essential to powering jaXon, Pine’s chat-based betting assistant• What they've learned from launching LLMs into real betting workflows with jaXon• The future of “autonomous betting” and where they see chat interfaces playing a role• How they’ve integrated tech stacks and restructured roles across the combined team• Their strategy to scale both the SharpSports API and Pine Sports’ user base• How big‑name athlete Marshawn Lynch is backing the company, and how his endorsement is boosting Pine Sports' brand credibility• Trends in how casual and sharp bettors are adopting new tooling• Why they view betting tools as an underserved and high-growth category• How Ryan and Vijay split responsibilities and stay aligned post-merger Catch the video version of this episode here.   Learn more 👇 ➡️ Pine Sports website ➡️ SharpSports website  ➡️ Vijay Dewan on Linkedin ➡️ Ryan Murphy on Linkedin   📩 Get the top headlines from the industry's most promising growth-stage companies every week—totally free! Subscribe to the Betting Startups newsletter here: https://news.bettingstartups.com/   -- This podcast is presented by Optimove, the #1 CRM Marketing solution for the iGaming industry. Since 2012, Optimove has served iGaming Operators from startups to industry leaders. Today, 4 out of the Top 5 US Operators Personalize Player Experiences with Optimove. iGaming operators know their growth journey begins and continues with Optimove, the #1 CRM Marketing solution for the iGaming industry.