Sneaker aficionados invest hundreds of dollars into rare Nike Air Jordans and the hottest Kanye West Adidas Yeezys. But scoring an authentic pair amid a crush of counterfeits is no slam dunk.
Culver City, Calif., startup GOAT (a nod to the sports shorthand for greatest of all time ) operates the world's largest sneaker marketplace that uses AI to stomp out fakes. The company offers a seal of authenticity for shoes approved for sale on its site.
Counterfeit sneakers are rampant online for some of the most sought after basketball brands.
Yeezys and Jordans are now the most faked shoes in the world, and over 10 percent of all sneakers sold online are fake, said Michael Hall, director of data at GOAT.
A pair of sought-after Kanye West Adidas Yeezys or Nike Air Jordans can easily set you back more than $300.
Pop culture interest in iconic shoes developed for sports stars and celebrity rappers is fueling instant sellouts in new releases. Meanwhile, there's a heated aftermarket for the most popular footwear fashions as well as scarce vintage and retro models.
As a result, sneaker fans and novices alike are turning to a new wave of shoe sellers, such as GOAT, to ensure they're getting getting an authentic pair of the most sought-after shoes.
GOAT pioneered the ship-to-verify model in the sneaker industry. This means that sellers can list any shoes on GOAT's marketplace, but shoes that sell are first sent to the company for authentication by its image detection AI. If the shoes are found to be replicas or not as described, they don't ship and buyers are given a refund.
Founded in 2015, GOAT's business is booming. The startup, which has expanded to more than 500 employees, attracts more than 10 million users and has the largest catalog of sneakers in the world at 35,000 skus. This year, the company merged with Flight Club, a sneaker consignment store with locations in Los Angeles,New York City and Miami.
GOAT's popular app and website - some users have sold more than $10 million in sneakers - has secured nearly $100 million in venture capital funding. The company is a member of NVIDIA's Inception program, which offers technical guidance to promising AI startups.
AI to Kick Out Counterfeits
When you're offering 35,000 unique styles, tracking down counterfeit sneakers is no small challenge. GOAT has teams of sneaker experts trained in the art of spotting replicas without AI. They can spot a fake in like 10 seconds, said Emmanuelle Fuentes, lead data scientist at GOAT.
Image recognition assists GOAT's teams of authenticators and quality assurance representatives to ID and authenticate shoes in the warehouse. And the more GOAT's experts provide helpful metadata to train the AI as they work, the better it helps all those vetting sneakers.
There's a long list of data signals that are fed into a cloud instance of GPUs for the identification process and for training the network. GOAT's convolutional neural networks are trained for anomaly and fraud detection.
GOAT, which has multiple neural networks dedicated to brands of sneakers, provides proprietary tools to help its authenticators upload data to train its identification networks.
GPUs Slam Dunk
Tracking and sharing expertise on so many models of high-end sneakers requires logging a ton of photos of authentic sneakers to help assist team members in handling shoes sent in for verification.
The resolution that we are capturing things at and the scale that we are capturing the images - it's a high-resolution, massive computational challenge requiring GPUs, said Fuentes.
GOAT turned to NVIDIA TITAN Xp GPUs and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs on P2 instances of AWS running the cuDNN-accelerated PyTorch deep learning framework to initially train their neural networks on 75,000 images of authentic sneakers.
The company relies on the power of GPUs for identification of all of its sneaker models, Hall added. For some of the most-coveted sneakers, there are more inauthentic pairs than real ones out there. Previously there wasn't a way for sneakerheads to purchase with confidence, he said.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
09/10/2026
September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026
New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...
08/10/2026
Modern venues have come a long way since the tinny, echoing audio of the mid 20t...
08/10/2026
ESPN's first Super Bowl production will stream in English and Spanish on Disney+, while the ESPN App carries the full slate of game, ManningCast, studio, an...
08/10/2026
From high-school videoboards to War Eagle Productions, the Opelika native is learning how to lead shows and capture big moments
The future of live sports produ...
08/10/2026
The Television Academy and Prime Video have announced a six-year agreement making Prime Video the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards beginning with the 20...
08/10/2026
Techex will exhibit at NAB Show New York 2026 (Booth 623, Javits Center, October...
08/10/2026
X Games has announced the appointment of Steve Rogers as Chief Operating Officer. Rogers previously served as COO of World Supercross and spent nearly a decade ...
08/10/2026
Fonn Group has appointed Trevor Spielmann as Sales Director for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Spielmann joins from EVS, where he held sales and business de...
08/10/2026
The flagship program will originate from major PG events with a four-camera production, live distribution across PGTV, social platforms
Perfect Game is bringin...
08/10/2026
Innovation rarely happens in a vacuum. More often, it happens at the point of collision: when worlds that have run on separate tracks begin to converge. That is...
08/10/2026
For decades, the production and broadcast services business has run on a familia...
08/10/2026
Uplynk, Zixi, BroadView Software, and Grass Valley have published The IP Converg...
08/10/2026
The NFL has announced the return of the Big Data Bowl, the league's analytics competition, now in its ninth year and again powered by AWS. Registration is o...
08/10/2026
Eutelsat has renewed its partnership with T l diffusion d'Alg rie (TDA), Algeria's national broadcasting network operator, for continued distribution of...
08/10/2026
Disney will livestream Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, alongside the game's broadcast on ESPN and ABC. All Disney subscribers in the United States wi...
08/10/2026
RHStv and Red House Streaming have announced an expansion of their partnership w...
08/10/2026
Gray Media has announced a distribution agreement with TEGNA and DAZN to simulca...
08/10/2026
SVG readers can save 10% on registration and receive a complimentary Solutions H...
08/10/2026
PROTON Camera Innovations GmbH has been named a recipient of a 2026 Technology a...
08/10/2026
Industry leaders discuss real-world cloud workflows for live game production, pl...
08/10/2026
The next-gen audio technology joins Dolby Vision as part of Apple TV's immersive F1 experience...
08/10/2026
David France, Jesse Short Bull, Mato Wayuhi, N. Bird Runningwater, Jodi Archambau, Jhane Myers, Paul McGuire, Amber Morning Star Byars, Holly Macarro, Nick Tils...
08/10/2026
Dynamic panning plug-ins get an upgrade
Sound Particles have just announced major updates for two of their popular dynamic panning plug-ins. Energy Panner 2...
08/10/2026
New expandable instrument boasts full DMNO engine
UDO Audio have just announced the upcoming release of a new, expandable synth that packs the power of the ...
08/10/2026
Two new subwoofers added to monitoring line-up
ADAM Audio's monitoring range has just been expanded with two new DSP-equipped subwoofers, the Sub8 PRO a...
08/10/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
08/10/2026
Calrec gives broadcasters freedom of choice at NAB Show New York We're looking forward to meeting up with you all at NAB New York on 21st-22nd October.
Cal...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Globecast, a leading provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, will showcase its next generation of media orchestration services at NAB S...
08/10/2026
Clear-Com played a critical role in the production communications infrastructure for Rock in Rio 2026, one of the world's largest and most recognized music...
08/10/2026
Sohonet Launches ClearView Rush: A Leap Forward in Studio Review, Built for Crea...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Ikegami announces a major expansion to its range of broadcast-quality live production cameras. Scheduled for introduction on Ikegami booth 708 at NAB New York, ...
08/10/2026
Calrec will be located at Booth 444.
Freedom to choose
The media landscape is evolving quickly, and the broadcasters best placed for what comes next will be...
08/10/2026
LiveU has announced that CRD Audiovisuel relied on LiveUs LU900Q intelligent production unit, with built-in native LiveU IQ (LIQ ) connectivity, to deliver live...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Marshall Electronics, a globally recognized provider of high-performance video solutions for broadcast, streaming, AV and professional production, will exhibit ...
08/10/2026
14-hour package also includes A Remarkable Place to Die season 2 as well as libr...
Sneaker aficionados invest hundreds of dollars into rare Nike Air Jordans and the hottest Kanye West Adidas Yeezys. But scoring an authentic pair amid a crush of counterfeits is no slam dunk.
