Press release HumanFab & Invesport Partners - October 06, 2026
Invesport Partners acquires a stake in HumanFab to build a network of regional performance hubs.
Aix-en-Provence (France) - October 06, 2026 - Invesport Partners, an investment and consolidation platform dedicated to European small and mid-sized businesses in sport and wellbeing, announces that it has acquired a stake in HumanFab, a leading centre of expertise in human performance engineering and sports performance. Completed in September 2026, this minority investment comes with a shared project: the development of a network of regional performance hubs in France and across Europe.
Founded in 2010 in Aix-en-Provence by Dr Jean-Bernard Fabre, HumanFab has established itself as a singular player at the crossroads of sport, health and scientific research. Its concept brings together in a single location a multidisciplinary team of doctors, physiotherapists, strength and conditioning coaches, engineers and researchers, serving professional and amateur athletes alike. Drawing on the scientific assessments carried out in its HumanLab, HumanFab offers personalised testing, training and recovery programmes, built on one of the sector’s richest databases of human measurement.
Beyond its work with athletes, HumanFab has developed an Industries business that scientifically evaluates and validates the products and innovations of equipment manufacturers in sport, health, mobility and wellbeing: more than 500 projects delivered, over 70 clients and 2 patents. The company also works with employers on employee health and wellbeing, in particular the prevention of musculoskeletal disorders.
The transaction marks a new stage in HumanFab’s development. Dr Jean-Bernard Fabre remains the principal shareholder and will continue to lead the company scientifically and operationally, alongside Invesport, which brings its expertise in structuring, governance and external growth, together with its network of elite athletes who are shareholders in the firm.
With Invesport’s backing, HumanFab intends to accelerate its development along three lines:
- the roll-out of regional performance hubs replicating the HumanFab model (scientific expertise, medical follow-up and physical preparation);
- the strengthening of its digital offering built on data; and
- the development of partnerships with clubs, federations, companies and manufacturers.
Dr Jean-Bernard Fabre, founder and Chief Executive Officer of HumanFab, said: “Since HumanFab was founded, our conviction has been that science and data-driven support must serve everyone’s performance and health. Invesport’s arrival gives us the means to take a step up: to replicate our know-how in new territories while preserving the standards that define us.”
Rodolphe Besserve, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Invesport Partners, continued: “We were won over by HumanFab’s scientific rigour and by the strength of a model proven over more than fifteen years with elite athletes. Our shared ambition is to make this expertise and these protocols available to as many people as possible, as close as possible to where they live, through a network of regional performance hubs.”
Tom Gauquelin, co-founder and Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Invesport Partners, added: “This transaction fully illustrates Invesport Partners’ purpose: to support entrepreneurs in sport and wellbeing over the long term, combining capital, governance and network, in order to build regional and European champions.
Press release Invesport Partners - October 06, 2026
Launch of Invesport Partners, an investment company dedicated to human performance.
Paris (France) - October 06, 2026 - Invesport Partners today announces its creation. Founded by five entrepreneurs and senior executives with backgrounds in healthcare, finance, media, sport and retail, the company is an investment and consolidation platform dedicated to European small and mid-sized businesses in sport and wellbeing. Its ambition is to become Europe’s reference operator in human performance, through a network of regional hubs serving professional clubs, companies and elite amateur athletes in particular.
Proven needs, missing infrastructure
The analysis behind the creation of Invesport Partners starts with professional sport. Clubs invest heavily in their talent, yet very few have their own complete facility - assessment, physical preparation, recovery, medical and mental health support - together with the qualified staff to run it. The first consequence is player unavailability, and its cost is considerable: an estimated €3.45 billion in wages was paid between 2020 and 2025 to unavailable players across Europe’s five major football leagues, for 22,596 recorded injuries. The same gap exists at the other end of the spectrum, among elite amateur athletes: close to 550,000 registered triathlon and trail-running athletes in Western Europe train at loads approaching those of professionals, often well equipped with sensors, but with no supervised assessment or medical follow-up to interpret the data.
A similar need exists in the corporate world. Occupational health services fulfil a statutory prevention role that is by nature periodic and discontinuous: between two appointments, no one monitors employees’ physical condition and mental load over time. Absenteeism nonetheless represents an estimated annual cost of €120 billion for French companies alone, with psychological causes now accounting for more than a third of long-term sick leave. The issue also applies to entrepreneurs and senior executives, exposed to high levels of mental load with no structured support.
The need is more pressing still within emergency services and the armed forces. For firefighters, military personnel and units with high physical demands, physical condition is a condition of safety, and the preparation of teams needs to be strengthened. A recent US study measured that a majority of firefighters deploying on operations fell below the recommended VO₂max, while cardiovascular events are the leading cause of on-duty deaths.
A conviction: integration rather than one more area of expertise
Physiology and biomechanics, sports medicine, nutrition, sleep and recovery, sensors, data: all of this expertise already exists, but it remains scattered across players that do not talk to one another. Invesport Partners is convinced that the next step change will not come from one more area of expertise, but from bringing them together within a single operator: shared, scientifically validated protocols, centralised and usable data, and trained and certified teams.
In a lastingly constrained budgetary environment, the answer can no longer be for every organisation to equip itself on its own. It lies in pooling: one facility, the same protocols and the same teams serving several organisations within the same area, to monitor and optimise performance, both physical and mental.
This model already exists at scale in the United States, where “human performance” operators support elite athletes, the military and large corporations across several hundred sites. No equivalent exists in Europe today.
A network of regional performance hubs built on already proven protocols
This roll-out rests first on a technological core. Invesport Partners has acquired a stake in HumanFab (a transaction announced in a separate release today), a centre of expertise in sport, health and industry based in Aix-en-Provence since 2010. Across more than 3,000 m², HumanFab brings together a movement analysis laboratory, a performance institute and a sports medicine clinic, around three disciplines: physiology, biomechanics and neuroscience. Fifteen years of measurement have produced the protocols, the database and the proprietary software that automates their processing. It is these protocols and algorithms that the network will deploy across the regions.
The model takes the form of a hub-and-spoke network: HumanFab as the reference centre, producing the research, validating the protocols, training and certifying the teams and centralising the data; and regional hubs of 600 to 700 m², operated under franchise to the same standards, close to clubs, companies and other users.
Each hub will bring together on a single floor a performance arena, a measurement laboratory, an environmental training space, a recovery area and a medical and return-to-play rehabilitation unit. The pathway will be the same for everyone: initial assessment, individualised programme, supervised execution, protocol-driven recovery, then a documented re-test every three to six months. Each re-test will enrich the shared database in Aix-en-Provence: the wider the network grows, the sharper the protocols become.
Four segments will be targeted as a priority, in an addressable market Invesport Partners estimates at €500 million in Western Europe:
- professional clubs, across all sports;
- companies, for the health, performance, attractiveness and retention of their teams;
- elite amateur athletes, particularly in endurance sports;
- the armed forces and emergency services, for whom physical condition is a condition of safety.
Construction of the first hub, planned in Pau, is due to start in 2027 for an opening in 2029, with a target network of five hubs within five years.
Rodolphe Besserve, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Invesport Partners, said: “The methods that make the world’s best sporting organisations win are no longer a secret: they are documented, published, and their effects have been measured. What is missing is not the science, it is its day-to-day execution, and an operator able to make it available beyond the handful of organisations that can afford to build it in-house.”
Tom Gauquelin, co-founder and Deputy Chief Executive Officer, added: “Our model is designed to rest on a base of recurring revenue and on disciplined execution: every hub will be built to the same standard, will apply the same protocols developed with HumanFab and will feed the same database. That is what makes the network replicable.”
Press release ASICS & HumanFab - June 16, 2026
ASICS Strengthens European Innovation Capabilities Through Establishment of ASICS Institute of Sport Science Europe and Partnership with HumanFab.
Kobe (Japan) & Aix-en-Provence (France) - June 16, 2026 - ASICS today announced the establishment of the ASICS Institute of Sport Science Europe (ISS Europe), a new research and development function, to further strengthen its research and development capabilities in Europe. Established within ASICS Europe B.V., ISS Europe will contribute locally to ASICS' global R&D efforts by collaborating with European partners, in close alignment with the ASICS Institute of Sport Science in Japan.
As part of this initiative, ASICS has also entered a strategic partnership with HumanFab, a premier sports research and expertise center, to enhance its athlete testing and innovation capabilities in the region, with an initial focus on tennis performance.
This milestone follows the establishment of ASICS Institute of Sport Science America LLC at the end of last year and represents a significant step in the company’s ongoing efforts to expand and strengthen its global R&D network.
This partnership gives ASICS access to HumanFab's state-of-the-art facilities, including one of the world's most advanced indoor tennis court labs — a competition-level environment that enables full-scale motion analysis on a regulation-size court. This allows researchers to capture critical performance data such as ball spin and speed with a level of precision that complements and extends the work of the ASICS Institute of Sport Science in Kobe. The result is deeper insights into elite athlete performance, enabling the future development of next-generation tennis products.
“We are incredibly passionate about physiology and biomechanics,” said Dr. Jean-Bernard Fabre, CEO and Founder of HumanFab. “Together with my team of scientists, we are proud to be working with ASICS, who will utilize the cutting-edge technology at our research center to advance the development of future tennis products.”
Europe is one of ASICS' key growth markets and home to many of its contracted professional athletes. By establishing a dedicated research presence in the region, ASICS will strengthen its ability to engage directly with these athletes, enabling richer data acquisition and more responsive product development, bringing the company closer to its founding vision of 'A Sound Mind in a Sound Body.'
“We are greatly honored to have established this partnership with HumanFab,” said Mitsuyuki Tominaga, President and COO of ASICS. “Throughout our history, ASICS has upheld its founding philosophy of ‘Anima Sana in Corpore Sano’ — ‘A Sound Mind in a Sound Body’ — and has been committed to delivering cutting-edge products that support athletes’ performance and well-being. By establishing a testing environment in Europe, we will be able to leverage advanced technologies and integrate real-time athlete data into our research and development activities. This facility will further accelerate our development cycle and help athletes achieve their highest levels of performance and feel.”
As part of the ASICS Global Tennis Summit program, ISS Europe and HumanFab presented their collaboration during a session held at HumanFab on June 14. Researchers from both organizations introduced the initiative and shared early findings from the project. The session also featured an early prototype of a next-generation tennis shoe currently being developed for future launch.
This initiative forms part of ASICS’ broader Global Integrated Enterprise (GIE) approach, under which regional expertise and athlete insights are connected across markets to support sustainable innovation and long-term business growth.