Wahoo CEO Gareth Joyce says the company has grown year over year since its 2023 recapitalisation and is planning seven or eight product launches in 2027 after a deliberately lean release year. He also calls Wahoo’s decade-plus workout-data archive “the next big opportunity,” now being worked on with machine learning and AI.
What Happened
Wahoo Fitness has returned to year-on-year growth following its 2023 recapitalisation, CEO Gareth Joyce told Cyclingnews in an exclusive interview.
Joyce, an engineer and keen cyclist and runner who joined Wahoo in 2024, said growth has continued in every year since the recapitalisation.
“We’ve seen growth year over year in all of the years since the recapitalisation, and I expect this year to be the same,” he said. He declined to provide actual figures.
He attributed the momentum to operational fixes made early.
“We’ve had very strong growth coming out of that,” Joyce said.
He pointed to “a great brand, great product, very committed customer base, and there were some things we needed to fix in the business which we paid attention to early on.”
His path to the role was unconventional. Joyce had never worked in the bike industry, but his recent experience guiding a company through Chapter 11 bankruptcy made him, in his own assessment, a fit for Wahoo’s financial turbulence.
He describes the job as bringing corporate structure to a startup. “It’s no longer just a startup,” he said. “We’ve got a large customer base that you have a responsibility to.”
Part of that reset was ending the patent fight with Zwift.
Wahoo had claimed the Zwift Hub smart trainer infringed its patents in a year-long lawsuit; the case was settled in September 2023, the Kickr Core Zwift One launched in March 2024, and Joyce was appointed in April.
“If we work together, we can grow the industry,” he said, describing a goal he set with Zwift co-founder and CEO Eric Min.
Joyce said Wahoo’s innovation engine had become a liability in one respect.
“You tend to become a little chaotic with your product strategy because every idea is a good idea,” he said, adding that trying to build everything spreads resources and focus.
The fix was to test every concept against the company’s mission of “building the better athlete in all of us.”
That reset explains a quiet launch year. “This year was a pretty lean year of releases for us, which was by design,” Joyce said.
“Last year, when we kind of reset the product strategy, we then had to reset the engineering program.” The payoff is slated for 2027. “I think we have seven or eight in the pipeline,” he said.
“I’m currently testing three of them as we speak. In fact, some of them are lying on my desk.”
The Kickr Core went from 2018 to 2025 without an update while the flagship Kickr reached its sixth iteration — seven counting the Kickr Move.
“There was no rational reason for that replacement cadence,” Joyce conceded. “The market was not demanding changes that quickly.”
Wahoo now runs category-specific cycles: roughly three years for bike computers, four for indoor trainers, and six for heart rate monitors and treadmills. Joyce stressed those are loose assumptions, not a fixed calendar.
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Bike computer replacement cycle | Roughly three years |
| Indoor trainer replacement cycle | Four years |
| Kickr Core gap between updates | 2018 to 2025 |
On indoor cycling tech, Joyce argues the disruptive phase is over.
“I think it’s now entering that phase of iterative development rather than disruptive technology,” he said, adding that nothing on a five-year horizon looks disruptive — with the caveat, “that doesn’t mean we’ve thought of everything.”
Running is the growth bet. Wahoo launched the Kickr Run treadmill in 2024, and while uptake has not matched the smart trainer, Joyce sees room to innovate. “Treadmills, for a very long time, have been terrible products,” he said.
Rather than build a full watch range against Garmin, Wahoo partnered with Coros. “To develop multiple SKUs is a very big investment, takes a lot of time, and would distract our attention from the rest of the strategy,” he explained.
Software underpins all of it. A new Wahoo app rolled out this year after a long beta, consolidating apps that had run in parallel.
“If our mission is building the better athlete in all of us, and I can’t tell you whether you’re becoming a better athlete or not, then it’s kind of hard to make that brand play,” Joyce said.
On AI, he splits the question in two. Internally, AI is used extensively across software, firmware and hardware engineering — an internal use of AI rather than a customer feature.
“We’ve seen significant acceleration in our development cycles of products, particularly software,” he said, citing faster app updates, with customer service also using AI to resolve issues more quickly while remaining entirely human.
On consumer AI, he is cautious, even as Zwift revealed its AI Coach this week and TrainerRoad uses AI-based adaptive training.
“I don’t want five licences for AI accounts. I want you to be able to pass me the data where I want it,” he said.
The real opening, he argues, is Wahoo’s archive. “We have records of workout data that goes back over a decade,” he said.
“We have the capability to translate that data into meaning, which is the next big opportunity we see, which we’re now starting to work on using machine learning and AI.”
What This Means For You
For product and engineering leaders: Joyce’s admission that “every idea is a good idea” caused resource spread is a concrete argument for filtering roadmaps against a single mission statement.
His cadence fix — three, four and six years by category — shows how to convert a vague roadmap into a defensible schedule.
For business leaders and founders: Because Joyce says growth has continued every year since the 2023 recapitalisation without disclosing figures, treat the turnaround as company-reported.
His Coros partnership suggests working with another brand can substitute for building a whole watch line in house.
For athletes who train with data: A decade of workout records is the asset Wahoo says it will mine with machine learning.
If that work matures, expect training insight delivered through the consolidated app rather than a separate AI subscription you would have to pay for twice.
Why It Matters
This suggests the fitness-hardware squeeze is less about inventing new sensors and more about discipline. Wahoo is publicly prioritising predictable refresh cycles over novelty, a shift that could mean fewer but better-telegraphed launches across the category.
Joyce’s stance on consumer AI is the more interesting signal.
By holding off on a separate AI coach and instead promising to “pass me the data where I want it,” Wahoo is betting that interoperability, not a walled garden, wins loyalty from athletes already paying for AI tools elsewhere.
Whether that holds depends on 2027, when seven or eight products land. That slate will be the first real test of whether structure and partnership can replace the startup-style chaos Joyce says he inherited.
Key Takeaway
- Gareth Joyce says Wahoo has grown year over year in every year since the 2023 recapitalisation, and expects 2026 to match — without publishing figures.
- Wahoo plans “seven or eight” product launches in 2027 after a deliberately lean release year spent resetting engineering.
- Replacement cycles are now roughly three years for bike computers, four for indoor trainers, and six for heart rate monitors and treadmills.
- Joyce is cautious on consumer AI features but calls Wahoo’s decade-plus workout-data archive “the next big opportunity,” now being worked on with machine learning and AI.
Sources
This report is based on coverage from Cyclingnews, omaha.com, vt.edu and finance.yahoo.com. Figures and quotes were checked against these reports before publication.
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