Why Equinox’s CTO is testing a generative AI pilot to suggest workout and nutrition advice

The productivity bucket is fairly straightforward. Equinox’s team is using AI to summarize documents, create emails, and automate some marketing materials and contracts. Where it gets more interesting for Equinox, which operates more than 100 fitness clubs, is a pilot of a generative AI-enabled feature that offers workout recommendations and nutrition tips.

This tools is built in Equinox’s branded mobile app but only available for employees. The rollout began with the tech team, then corporate employees and instructors, before it could become widely available to all Equinox gym goers if all goes well. This reflects Veluri’s technology playbook: always test internally first. 

“Our personal training coaches are probably going to be the most rigorous in terms of the feedback,” says Veluri. 

He asserts that the insights from Equinox’s rigorous training data are what sets it apart from the more generalized recommendations that may be produced from standard AI models. “The value is added when we have our proprietary thinking that is embedded with the general recommendation, so that the end user should feel that this is something that I’m getting that is on par with what an Equinox coach would provide,” says Veluri.

There’s also a more valuable feedback loop with the application of generative AI, as Equinox is now able to utilize large language models that can digest written comments from users and then adjust future fitness and nutrition suggestions. Prior variations of these tools would rely on a more simplistic “thumbs up, thumbs down” response.

“That ability for our members to have agency over the recommendations, and for us to be able to incorporate that feedback into modifying the recommendations, is something that would not have been possible if we did not have gen AI,” says Veluri. 

Veluri has had a long career at Equinox, joining the fitness company in 2010 as director of digital products and rising up through the ranks to become CTO in 2021. Through that time, Equinox has invested in a mobile app that offers users virtual classes, and invested in more technically advanced treadmills, ellipticals, and other workout machinery.

Over that period of time, the fitness industry has democratized the accessibility of workout data, with fitness trackers like the Apple Watch, Fitbit, and Garmin enjoying mass adoption and easily tracking steps taken throughout the day, calories burned, sleep, and heart rate. Studies on these devices are fairly limited, but research does indicate that the use of fitness trackers can promote more fitness.

AI could make promoting a healthier lifestyle even easier. One way that Equinox utilizes AI, which predates the generative boom, involves Netflix-styled recommendations for classes that a fitness freak may want to try based on their past preference for yoga or cycling, the weather of the day, and the club locations they tend to frequent. Veluri says after this feature went live, Equinox saw class bookings dramatically increase. That engagement can lead to less club member attrition.

The company has also rolled out a generative AI chatbot that can answer straightforward questions including “What time is my gym open?”

“Our business model is one where we want and encourage our members to use our clubs as often as they can,” says Veluri.

With a scrappy technology team of just around 80 people, Veluri says he has to be careful about spending and doesn’t put too much money into any one tech initiative.

Equinox also has a close relationship with Amazon Web Services, a partner it leaned on to rearchitect its tech stack and streamline workflows for engineers. Previously, Equinox ran workloads on a Windows-based server and each digital fitness service ran as an individual task. That added complexity to the software updates process. While the application infrastructure is now housed more efficiently with AWS, Equinox says it utilizes large language models from various providers, including AWS and Anthropic.

Veluri says the culture he’s created with his technology team is one that encourages everyone to offer suggestions for what mobile app features should be explored next. The team takes a close look at competitor gym and fitness apps to ensure the features Equinox offers are in good shape.

“The biggest advantage of Equinox is that we use the services of our company a lot,” says Veluri. “We also have goals and we also want to achieve results.”

John Kell

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NEWS PACKETS

Big Tech’s 2025 AI Spending Total: $344 billion. Bloomberg took a look at the latest quarterly spending plans from four of the world’s largest technology companies—Microsoft, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Alphabet—and found that their capital expenditures reached $89 billion in the second quarter. A lot of those funds are going toward building out data centers that are needed to run AI models, which can give these tech giants an edge that Wall Street is rewarding or punishing based on what they are gleaning from the earnings results. Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, as an example, reported a second-quarter sales total that exceeded expectations and issued a positive revenue forecast, growth that CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed to “AI unlocking greater efficiency and gains across our ad system.” Amazon, meanwhile, saw shares fall partly due to retail volatility but also the competitive dynamics in cloud and AI that led to some concerns about the company’s market position.

AI blamed for thousands of job cuts so far this year. Under the hood of a U.S. job market that’s looking increasingly shaky after a weak report for July and downward revisions for the prior two months is a report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas that found the adoption of generative AI technology by private employers accounted for more than 10,000 job cuts for the first seven months in 2025. As prior reporting has shown, the impact of AI on hiring has most notably affected younger workers. CBS News reports that job listings for entry-level corporate roles have declined 15% over the past year, citing data from career platform Handshake. "The industry is being reshaped by the advancement of artificial intelligence and ongoing uncertainty surrounding work visas, which have contributed to workforce reductions," Challenger, Gray & Christmas said. Meanwhile, IT trade group CompTIA reports that postings for tech positions contracted slightly in July from the prior month.

Apple is feeling the pressure in the AI race. After the tech behemoth reported a robust fiscal third-quarter earnings report, driven by strong demand for iPhones, Bloomberg says CEO Tim Cook held a rare all-hands meeting intended to rally the troops around the company’s AI prospects and pipeline of features even as questions continue to linger about Apple’s AI struggles. “We’ve rarely been first,” Cook reportedly told Apple’s team. “There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod.” Separately, the outlet reports of the early stages of a new team called “Answers, Knowledge and Information,” which may be working on creating a new ChatGPT-like search engine. Rivals have taken notice, with Google recently poking fun of Apple’s delayed AI features in an advertisement for the Pixel 10 smartphone.

OpenAI, Amazon, and Google among companies that signed EU’s AI code of practice. The European Commission’s AI office published a list of signatories that have committed to the EU’s AI code of practice, a set of rules as it pertains to transparency, copyright, safety, and security for companies that deploy general-purpose AI models. U.S. tech giants including Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and OpenAI have signed the code of practice, as well as Europe’s Mistral AI and Aleph Alpha. Meta was a notable hold out, as was Elon Musk’s xAI, which only signed onto one of the three chapters of the code. Those that haven’t signed the code of practice will still need to adhere to the requirements in the EU’s AI Act, which was adopted by the European Parliament last year, though most of the substantive requirements will be applicable by 2026. 

ADOPTION CURVE

IT leaders say they are losing 8.6% of business revenue on inability to tap AI. A survey of 800 global IT decision-makers from businesses with over 1,000 employees reported that they believe the inability to make use of AI in a timely manner would them to lose, on average, 8.6% of their revenue. For the sample of the study, conducted by database software provider Couchbase, that would equate to an annual loss of almost $87 million.

Businesses say that the top issues disrupting their AI projects include a perception that the risk of failure was or had become too high (45% of respondents), followed by an inability to secure the necessary budget or stay within budget (39%) and a lack of confidence that the project would meet security or compliance demands (36%).

Julie Irish, chief information officer at Couchbase, told Fortune that her approach to keep costs in check on AI investments centered on piloting every single solution pitched by vendors. Irish says by doing so, she can keep a close eye on how long it takes to implement new AI tools, better predict costs for a broader rollout, and determine if the technology meets the use case.

“I think there’s a lot of overpromising,” says Irish. “If it's really as easy as they say, and it's really going to add that much value, ‘Hey, let's try it out. Let's see how it's working.’”

Courtesy of Couchbase

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

- Ronald McDonald House Charities is seeking a CIO, based in Chicago. Posted salary range: $222K-$289K/year.

- EchoStar is seeking a CIO, based in Englewood, Colorado. Posted salary range: $400K-$500K/year.

- Air Force Research Laboratory is seeking a CTO, based in Dayton, Ohio. Posted salary range: $125.2K-$197.5K/year.

- Royal Electric is seeking a CIO, based in Long Beach, California. Posted salary range: $220K-$295K/year.

Hired:

- Amway appointed Ryan Talbott as CTO, succeeding Becky Smith, the direct selling company’s chief financial officer, who had served as interim CTO for the past several months. Prior to joining Amway, Talbott was VP and global CIO for automotive parts supplier BorgWarner. He has also held executive roles at auto maker Stellantis and management consulting firm Accenture.

- Certara announced the appointment of Christopher Bouton as CTO, where he will oversee the technology strategy for the drug development software maker. Bouton previously was the founder and CEO of life sciences software company Vyasa Analytics, which Certara acquired in 2022. He also previously found and led software provider Entagen, which was acquired by Thomson Reuters.

- Highmark Health named Dr. Alistair Erskine as chief information digital officer, joining the Pittsburgh-based health care company after most recently serving as CIDO at Georgia health care system Emory Healthcare. He also previously served as chief digital health officer at not-for-profit health care system Mass General Brigham and CIO at Pennsylvania regional health care provider Geisinger.

- Advarra appointed Brian Hart as CTO, joining the clinical research services provider after most recently serving as CTO at clinical analytics company Covera Health. Earlier in his career, he served as a director of clinical data and innovation at IBM Watson Health and VP of research and development for Merge Healthcare, a medical imaging company acquired by IBM in 2015.

- CSAA Insurance Group named Bradley Lontz as EVP and CIO, joining the insurance provider after most recently serving as CIO at CopperPoint Insurance. Prior to that, he also held CIO roles at California Dental Association and Nautilus Insurance. Earlier in Lontz’s career, he held senior leadership positions at Liberty Mutual, Cummins, and PwC.

- CloudFactory announced the appointment of Ajai Sharma as chief product and technology officer, responsible for product strategy and technology vision for the company that labels data used for training AI models. Sharma previously served as a head of product at Amazon Web Services and before that, an AI and deep learning product expert for consultancy McKinsey.

- Inmar Intelligence promoted Srini Varadarajan to the role of CTO, after he most recently served as SVP of software engineering for the data insights company. Earlier in Varadarajan’s career, he consulted and led engineering teams at organizations including Volvo, Avis, and JPMorgan Chase.