The teen founder turning male fertility into a sport 

At the questionable corner of sports entertainment and male fertility is Sperm Racing, a startup that recently closed a $10m seed round (we will try to resist the low-hanging puns here).

Sperm Racing is, unsurprisingly, the brainchild of an 18-year-old entrepreneur: Eric Zhu. And it’s exactly what it sounds like: 

• Two contestants source samples of many million competitors (privately, of course) and those swimmers race until one crosses the finish line.
• The race track mimics a microscopic version of a reproductive system.
• High-resolution cameras capture everything in real time and verify results. 

Zhu wants to turn these competitions into full-blown spectacles, involving fanfare like press conferences, weigh-ins, and play-by-play commentary — and he's making headway. 

Sperm Racing is currently on a live college tour, and its streams and event recordings rack up  hundreds of thousands of views. 

This begs the obvious: Why?

Zhu wants to promote a dialogue on male fertility (which has been declining for decades) by gamifying it.

And the company's recent funding round highlights investor interest in the market, projected to grow around 55% to $7.18B by 2034. 

The industry is already commanding a lot of VC attention, including companies like:

• Posterity Health, a virtual-first male fertility and sexual health clinic that closed a $13m Series A earlier this year.
• Legacy, a home sperm freezing and testing startup that raised $7.5m in new funding in late 2024.
• Fellow Health, a startup offering mail-in semen analysis tests that closed a $24m Series B in July.

Ultimately, Sperm Racing exists at the crossroads of a noble cause, a hot market, unique tech, and a sincere appeal to big, dumb fun. Say what you will, but companies like that don't bust on the scene every day.