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 ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia backs audience-led filmmaking with new insight-driven initiativ...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia refines guidelines for Narrative Content Development and Docume...
02/07/2026
Maxon Autograph: Introduction to working with Tables
Simon Ubsdell July 1, 2026
0 Comments
An overview of Autograph's ridiculously powerful tables...
02/07/2026
Boston Conservatory's Soir e Breaks Records to Fund Student Scholarships The event achieved 127 percent of its fundraising goal in an evening celebrating ...
02/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Med Tech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might thin...
01/07/2026
Broadcast Management Group (BMG) has announced the appointment of Kathy Samuels ...
01/07/2026
Shade has announced Custom Objects and Automations, a platform expansion releasing June 29, 2026, that adds database and workflow automation capabilities direct...
01/07/2026
FOR-A America has announced the addition of Jaz Wray and Fernando Cruz to its U.S. sales team. Both report to Ernie Leon, Senior VP and Head of Sales and Strate...
01/07/2026
NBC Sports will air all 15 MLB games nationally on Sunday, July 5, across NBC, P...
01/07/2026
Clear-Com has announced a wireless communications upgrade for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, deploying FreeSpeak II and FreeSpeak Icon systems across both prod...
01/07/2026
England's performance team will use Sony's STATSports APEX GPS tracking system to monitor player physical data in real time during FIFA World Cup 2026 m...
01/07/2026
Adder Technology has announced the appointment of Neil Hillier as Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1, 2026. Hillier succeeds Adrian Dickens, who transiti...
01/07/2026
Bitcentral, Inc. has announced a strategic transaction creating two separate companies. The Production and Playout business will continue as Bitcentral, now own...
01/07/2026
DAZN has announced results from DAZN48, its creator initiative for the FIFA World Cup 2026. Launched in April 2026, the program received thousands of applicatio...
01/07/2026
Sarah Rose, VP, global services, Daktronics (NASDAQ: DAKT), will be inducted into the Information Display and Entertainment Association (IDEA) Hall of Fame at t...
01/07/2026
Gravity Media and the World Economic Forum's production team provided broadc...
01/07/2026
Insight Productions has announced the launch of Insight Storm, a 53-foot mobile broadcast unit built for esports production. The truck is built around a Ross Vi...
01/07/2026
ESPN has announced several content initiatives marking America's 250th anniversary, as part of The Walt Disney Company's Disney Celebrates America pro...
01/07/2026
Eleven production kits, REMI workflows, and cloud distribution bring 40 World Cu...
01/07/2026
The conference also discussed the opportunities offered an industry that is endu...
01/07/2026
The Mountain West Conference has announced the launch of MW , a direct-to-consumer streaming platform powered by Kiswe. The platform will carry live Mountain We...
01/07/2026
New AI Assistant, Multi-channel Audio, ARA2 improvements & more
Tracktion's DAW software has just received its latest major update, gaining a selection ...
01/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
01/07/2026
Exclusive run of limited-edition modelling pedals
Sweetwater and Andertons M...
01/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) is pleased to announce that the ca...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Manfrotto Introduces UNCOVER, the new premium camera bag collection for modern h...
01/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Powers Houston Tamil Sangam Literacy Competition
Brie Clayton July 1, 2026
0 Comments
Volunteers use ATEM Mini Pro, Blackmagic Desig...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
PlayBox Technology has published State of Broadcast Infrastructure 2026, an in-depth industry research report examining the technologies, operational challenges...
01/07/2026
LONDON, UK, 1 JULY Jigsaw24 has appointed Alan Henry as Head of Sales for Media and Entertainment, reinforcing its continued investment in helping broadcaster...
01/07/2026
Content Vault, the patent-pending secure content distribution platform protecting high-value media from disclosures, theft and unauthorised access, today announ...
01/07/2026
Bitcentral, Inc. a leading provider of enterprise software and digital media solutions for news, sports and entertainment broadcasters, as well as streaming pla...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Groundbreaking First Nations Screen Business Accelerator launched through nation...
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.
