WARREN — The CEO of a nonprofit energy-tech incubator based in downtown Warren is stepping down as part of a planned leadership transition, BRITE Energy Innovators announced last week.

Rick Stockburger, who has served as BRITE’s first CEO for nearly eight years, will be assuming “a prominent national role in the energy sector,” the incubator stated in a news release.

BRITE’s current managing director, Jing Lyon, will serve as interim CEO as its board conducts a national search for a permanent leader.

“Rick has been at the heart of BRITE since its early days,” said Michael Stacey, BRITE board chair and managing director at KPMG US. “His leadership has guided the organization’s momentum, and we are grateful for his commitment to our mission.”

Under Stockburger’s leadership, BRITE has helped its portfolio companies raise more than $200 million in capital in 2024. Since its founding in 2010, BRITE has supported more than 650 energy-tech startups, catalyzing more than 2,100 jobs and raising more than half a billion dollars in third-party investment while working with BRITE.

“Leading BRITE has been such a privilege,” Stockburger said. “Together with our incredible team and trailblazing startups, we’ve built a place where proud Midwestern grit meets innovation.

Lyon is a Case Western Reserve-trained chemical engineer and early team member at battery technology startup Stratum Energy. She joined BRITE in 2022. Under her leadership, BRITE’s startup programs have tripled in scale, including the launch and rapid growth of its flagship CXO Program, which embeds fractional executives into startup teams.

Stockburger will remain at BRITE in an advisory capacity through June 30, with Lyon assuming leadership July 1.

Eric Trump, the president’s son running The Trump Organization in his absence, announced a new venture Monday called Trump Mobile. The plan is to sell phones that will be built in the U.S., and the phone service will maintain a call center in the country as well.

The announcement of the new mobile phone and service, called T1 Mobile, follows several real estate deals for towers and resorts in the Middle East, including a golf development in Qatar announced in April. A $1.5 billion partnership to build golf courses, hotels and real estate projects in Vietnam was approved last month, though the deal was in the works before Trump was elected.

Even oversight of such a company, with the Trump name attached, raises ethical concerns.

Trump has already used the federal government to reward his allies and punish his enemies. The Federal Communications Commission, the primary regulatory body overseeing mobile phone companies, has already launched investigations of media outlets Trump dislikes and, in some cases, is personally suing.

Eric Trump said Monday that consumers deserve a phone that aligns with their values.

“Hard-working Americans deserve a wireless service that’s affordable, reflects their values, and delivers reliable quality they can count on,” he said in a statement.

The company would also enter a highly competitive market that includes companies that have been directly attacked by Donald Trump.

The president criticized Apple last month because it planned to make most of its U.S. iPhones in India, and threatened to slap a 25% tariff on the devices unless the tech giant starts building the phones domestically.

The Trump phone deal comes as a mandatory financial disclosure report just filed with the government shows the president has moved fast in the last year to profit off his celebrity, taking in $3 million in revenue from selling “Save America” coffee table books, $2.8 million from Trump watches and $2.5 million from Trump branded sneakers and fragrances.

The Trump Organization on Monday said the new, gold-colored phone available for $499 in August, called the T1 Phone, won’t be designed or made by Trump Mobile, but by another company.

The Trump Organization did not respond immediately to a request for more details.

In the first term, Trump was blasted by conservative and liberal government ethics experts alike for opening his Washington hotel to lobbyists and diplomats and violating his company’s pledge to avoid even the appearance of a conflict between his private profit and the public interest.

The company is feeling more emboldened now in the second term.

The mobile service is partnering with existing cellular carriers with access to a 5G network, raising questions of how they will be treated by federal regulators now that they have partnered with his company. The Trump Organization said those companies are America’s three biggest mobile network providers, an apparent reference to Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, the latter with a trademarked name that is very similar to Trump’s T1 Mobile.

The name given to the monthly service offer, The 47 Plan, and the monthly fee of $47.45 make reference to Trump’s two terms, the 45th and the 47th. The service will include unlimited calls, texts and data and free roadside assistance and telehealth services.

A mock-up of the planned phone on the company’s website shows Trump’s slogan “Make America Great” on the front and an etched American flag on the back.

By sticking to licensing, the Trump family is limiting its risk. Still, the new service faces big challenges if it hopes to sell beyond the president’s loyal MAGA fans.

The Trump company tried to tap into support among the middle class in the first term with two mid-priced hotel chains. Called American Idea and Scion, and unveiled like the phone service Monday under a giant U.S. flag in the Trump Tower atrium, they flopped.

Despite taking in millions of dollars each year in various licensing deals and a string of new ventures, the Trump brand has taken a series of hits to its brand over the years.

During his first term, the Trump name was stripped off residential buildings and hotels in Toronto, Panama and Manhattan.

The Trump International Hotel in Washington, since sold, lost money even though the family opened its doors to businesses and governments trying to shape U.S. policy.

The average condo in 11 Trump-branded residential towers around the country underperformed the broader market during and immediately after Trump’s first term. More recently, the value of Trump condos in New York City fell in the past two years as similar properties rise in value, according to brokerage CityRealty.

The Trump Organization has had more success with some ventures launched in the first few months of his second term.

Trump Media & Technology Group, a Florida company that operates the Truth Social media platform, filed plans with security regulators Monday to launch an exchange-traded fund tied to the prices of two popular cryptocurrencies.

The ETF is part of the Trump family’s rapidly growing crypto empire, which includes a new stablecoin and launching and promoting memecoins.

The president’s most recent financial disclosure report reveals he made more than $57 million last year from World Liberty Financial, a crypto company he and his sons helped launch in September.

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AP Business Writer Alan Suderman contributed to this story.

SHENZHEN, China, June 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — On June 16, Mibro, a brand of ZhenShi Information Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd, proudly announces the launch of three new smartwatches: GS Explorer S, GS Pro2, and GS Active2, marking a milestone in its brand evolution. With a renewed focus on integrating sports and technology, the release underscores the brand’s commitment to supporting athletes across various disciplines.

Each smartwatch in the lineup is designed to serve a unique athletic purpose. The Mibro GS Explorer S is engineered for extreme outdoor adventurers, ensuring durability in demanding environments. It supports freediving, sailing, surfing, mountaineering, and rock climbing, featuring military-grade durability, Bluetooth calling, a 100-meter water resistance rating and advanced health monitoring. A premium version boasts an aerospace-grade titanium alloy body. At MWC 2025, the GS Explorer S won the “Best in Show” award from Wareable, highlighting its exceptional performance and design.

The Mibro GS Pro2 targets triathlon participants, particularly those who engage in the sport regularly through amateur events. As the flagship model of the lineup, it combines rugged construction with a lightweight build. The smartwatch supports multi-sport tracking for swimming, cycling, and running, and includes trajectory navigation for enhanced route planning and performance analysis.

The running community will find its match in the lightweight design of the Mibro GS Active2, which weighs just 39.9 grams. Tailored specifically for runners, the smartwatch incorporates six core technologies, reshaping training experiences through various running modes and personalized training plans.

A notable innovation across the new GS Series lineup is the Padel mode. Using real athlete performance data and guidance from China’s top Padel professionals, the feature provides sport-specific metrics and professional-grade feedback tailored to players of all skill levels.

All three watches are powered by Galaxy OS 2.0, delivering a smoother and more intuitive user interface. The system allows seamless health and fitness data integration with third-party platforms, including Google Fit for Android users, Apple Health for iOS, and Strava for GPS-enabled devices, ensuring a connected and holistic user experience.

This launch marks Mibro’s evolution from a wearable brand to a sports tech partner. Backed by 300+ R&D engineers, 200+ patents, and an in-house sports science lab, the company is poised to drive the next generation of smart athletic performance tools.

SHENZHEN, China, June 16, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — On June 16, Mibro, a brand of ZhenShi Information Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd, proudly announces the launch of three new smartwatches: GS Explorer S, GS Pro2, and GS Active2, marking a milestone in its brand evolution. With a renewed focus on integrating sports and technology, the release underscores the brand’s commitment to supporting athletes across various disciplines.

Each smartwatch in the lineup is designed to serve a unique athletic purpose. The Mibro GS Explorer S is engineered for extreme outdoor adventurers, ensuring durability in demanding environments. It supports freediving, sailing, surfing, mountaineering, and rock climbing, featuring military-grade durability, Bluetooth calling, a 100-meter water resistance rating and advanced health monitoring. A premium version boasts an aerospace-grade titanium alloy body. At MWC 2025, the GS Explorer S won the “Best in Show” award from Wareable, highlighting its exceptional performance and design.

The Mibro GS Pro2 targets triathlon participants, particularly those who engage in the sport regularly through amateur events. As the flagship model of the lineup, it combines rugged construction with a lightweight build. The smartwatch supports multi-sport tracking for swimming, cycling, and running, and includes trajectory navigation for enhanced route planning and performance analysis.

The running community will find its match in the lightweight design of the Mibro GS Active2, which weighs just 39.9 grams. Tailored specifically for runners, the smartwatch incorporates six core technologies, reshaping training experiences through various running modes and personalized training plans.

A notable innovation across the new GS Series lineup is the Padel mode. Using real athlete performance data and guidance from China’s top Padel professionals, the feature provides sport-specific metrics and professional-grade feedback tailored to players of all skill levels.

All three watches are powered by Galaxy OS 2.0, delivering a smoother and more intuitive user interface. The system allows seamless health and fitness data integration with third-party platforms, including Google Fit for Android users, Apple Health for iOS, and Strava for GPS-enabled devices, ensuring a connected and holistic user experience.

This launch marks Mibro’s evolution from a wearable brand to a sports tech partner. Backed by 300+ R&D engineers, 200+ patents, and an in-house sports science lab, the company is poised to drive the next generation of smart athletic performance tools.

For more information, please visit https://www.mibrofit.com/, or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

For business inquiries, please contact business@mibrofit.com.

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

Quick Summary

Peloton’s CEO has teased that new hardware could be on the cards.

No details were specified, but it looks like we will learn more about the new equipment roadmap in a few months.

Peloton has released a number of new fitness features onto its equipment over the last couple of years, but it’s been a while since we have seen any new hardware.

The latest to come from the company was the Peloton Row, which launched at the end of 2022, but that has yet to be made available in the UK. So for those this side of the pond, the Peloton Guide is the most recent.

Thankfully though, after teasing what could be a deeper integration with Garmin Connect on the software side of things, Peloton’s CEO, Peter Stern, has now mentioned hardware as part of a possible future roadmap.

During Peloton’s Q3 2025 earnings call (via Pelobuddy), Stern responded to a question from an analyst saying: “We’ve got to start innovating on our hardware. We’ve been doing a great job on software, but it’s all got to come together as a mix of hardware and software and incredible content that we’ve got, so that our members derive even more value from us and they’ve got reasons to buy more from Peloton.”

No specifics were detailed, but the report on Pelobuddy pulls out the “reasons to buy more” quote. It claims this suggests Peloton will offer new products or enhancements to its existing equipment as part of its near-future strategy.

When might we learn more about new Peloton hardware?

As for when we might learn about what the firm has in the pipeline, Stern suggested during the Bank of America Global Tech Conference at the beginning of June that the roadmap would be shared later this year.

“[I’m] not here today to announce the future product roadmap of the company. I think we’ll do that a few weeks after the fourth quarter earnings because I think I’d like to separate it in time,” he said during the conference.

For now, there are no official details of what Peloton equipment we might see launch this or early next year, but it certainly seems like it has something up its sleeve. We just hope we get it in the UK… unlike the Peloton Row.

In April, renowned dealmaker Michael Klein told the crowd at SBJ’s World Congress of Sports that it was “a dramatic overstatement” to say institutional capital had flooded into sports, noting the industry still is dominated by individual investors while in other mature sectors “institutional dollars are roughly equal to 80% to 90% of the asset class.”

But that is quickly changing, as private equity firms continue to carve out stakes across the sports landscape, and recent months have featured an influx of new fund launches. Private equity principals tell Sports Business Journal that those efforts highlight the growing need for differentiation among private equity firms in the sector.

To be sure, the pace of investment activity should only accelerate, given the latest wave of capital formation for sports dealmaking.

Longtime sports executive Dave Checketts has teamed up with Utah’s Eccles family to launch Cynosure | Checketts Sports Capital, which plans to raise at least $1.2 billion.

Mark Cuban, Steve Cannon and Rashuan Williams are behind Harbinger Sports Partners, now raising $750 million to acquire minority team stakes.

In January, Ariel Investments rolled out women’s sports investment platform Project Level, which has acquired stakes in League One Volleyball and the NWSL’s expansion team in Denver. Though the fund has not disclosed a target size, Jason Wright, managing partner and head of investments, said it will be “a mix of growth equity, private equity and real estate return profiles.” Fund literature suggests it’s seeking minimum investments of $50 million.

Those newcomers are joined by existing sports investors pursuing new fundraising efforts, a group that includes Bruin Capital, a spokesperson for the company confirmed.

That’s to say nothing of the sports investment firms launched in recent years that continue to raise. According to recent SEC filings, Dynasty Equity Partners is nearly 40% of the way to its $1 billion target, while Velocity Capital Management is just over halfway to raising a planned $500 million debut fund.

The uptick in new sports funds flies in the face of broader trends, with the number of overall private equity fund launches dwindling in recent years.

In January, research from S&P Global revealed that just more than 1,000 new private equity funds debuted in 2024, less than one-quarter the number of funds launched during the highs of 2021. Global fundraising efforts have likewise stalled in that time, with fund managers raising a total $680 million last year, down 30% year over year and a nearly 40% decline from the high of $1.1 trillion raised four years ago.

“The recent proliferation of sports-oriented investment funds shows that the industry is ascendent and continues to attract more and more professional capital. This is a very good thing,” said Michael Spirito, co-founding partner of Sapphire Sport. “With that proliferation, however, comes even more competition for that capital base, both institutional and strategic. This is especially true in a macro environment, where early- to mid-stage private returns are taking longer.”

Sapphire Sport succeeded in raising an oversubscribed $181 million second fund a few years ago, and Spirito stressed the value of Sapphire’s differentiated focus on backing tech-enabled companies that can “enhance the sport and entertainment sector, but that also serve a broader audience.”

“Unless you have a very specific lens on what you’re investing in and the differentiators for you as a fund, then it’s actually a challenging [fundraising] environment.”

—  Jason Wright, Ariel Investments, Project Level

The need for differentiation was echoed by numerous fund managers, most of whom noted that simply providing exposure to sports is no longer sufficient.

“Unless you have a very specific lens on what you’re investing in and the differentiators for you as a fund, then it’s actually a challenging [fundraising] environment,” said Wright, noting Project Level’s ambitions to bring new scale and operational expertise to women’s sports properties. “We are finding it’s a unique value proposition.”

Project Level follows Monarch Collective, which launched in 2023 as the first fund specific to women’s sports. That sharp focus helped it blow past an initial $100 million target, with the firm closing a $250 million debut fund in March.

Wright also noted the benefit of operating within Ariel and alongside its co-CEO and President Mellody Hobson, which “makes us not feel like a new fund.”

Few, if any, sports-focused private equity investors are more established than Bruin, which was founded by CEO George Pyne in 2015. Pyne wouldn’t comment on his firm’s current fundraising efforts, citing SEC restrictions around solicitation, but he said Bruin has long sought to stand apart from the crowd. That’s included a focus on international dealmaking: Bruin’s eight portfolio companies have some 4,000 employees across two dozen countries.

“The international footprint of Bruin is unique,” Pyne said. “And we’re in the growth capital sector of private equity. The size of companies we’re investing in, we open up markets for them, which is really valuable.”

Pyne added that Bruin pursues “bilateral” opportunities where the firm can craft bespoke opportunities without competition, noting Bruin has “never competed with the same company twice on a deal.”

The Chernin Group’s Greg Bettinelli likewise highlighted how a track record of hunting for unique investments can set funds apart. TCG, which is still investing out of its $1.3 billion third fund, has homed in on a subset of categories, including international fandom, storytelling and youth sports.

“Most, if not all, of our deals in and around sports have been ‘proprietary,’” Bettinelli said. “We developed the thesis, we built the relationships, we went and structured or put together the investments versus those investments being brought to us.”

Differentiation remains important even for established funds putting a new emphasis on sports. One example is Cordillera Investment Partners, the $1.8 billion private equity firm with a focus on niche, non-correlated assets that recently acquired stakes in the Professional Triathletes Organisation and Denver NWSL.

Co-founder and co-managing partner Ashley Marks said Cordillera is eyeing further opportunities in emerging leagues, women’s sports and ancillary businesses, such as sports law firms.

“We are looking more for the nooks and crannies within sports, and really being diligent on … finding areas that are pre-institutional and not overly dependent on the media aspect of things,” Marks said.

Chris Smith can be reached at crsmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com.