It started with a sensor.
Running made it personal.
STRIV began with advanced tactile sensing. But it became a company when the technology met a problem our founder had lived with for years.
Founder Axl Chen holds degrees in computer science from Columbia and design & technology from Parsons, driven by one question: how can machines understand the physical world? Built in the Cambridge/MIT ecosystem, STRIV's thin, flexible textile-based tactile sensors went on to support research at MIT CSAIL and other leading labs.




A distance runner since high school, Axl was repeatedly sidelined by shin pain and ankle injuries. So he put the sensors into his own shoes, looking beyond pace and heart rate to understand how his body was actually moving.



We shipped the first version of STRIV to nearly 2,000 runners who tested it in their own training. Every run, conversation, and iteration taught us what athletes actually needed — not just what looked good in a lab.



Today's STRIV is built from those lessons: a practical way for athletes to understand movement, notice how it changes, and make more informed training decisions.










