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Weeks after Nike’s vice president of virtual studios left the company, its vice president of AI is exiting. Jason Loveland, who has held the role for four years and spent more than seven years total at the company, is taking on “a new challenge,” according to a LinkedIn post late last week.
The executive did not say what his next position would be. A Nike spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the departure, who would be replacing Loveland, whether the exit represented a broader pullback from AI initiatives and if it was connected at all to the recent departure of Virtual Studios’ Ron Faris.
Loveland thanked the Nike team for his time at the company and touted highlights including working on athlete performance analytics with Nike’s Sport Research Lab, integrating data company Celect, which Nike acquired in 2019, and creating algorithms for Nike’s smart footwear.
“Capping it all off was pioneering the first fine-tuned generative AI model to design Nike products; revealed to the world at the Paris Olympics and Air Max Day,” Loveland wrote. “Leading our transformational generative AI initiative to deliver new revenue and productivity was the ultimate team sport.”
Nike laid off a “limited number” of tech employees in May, the result of moving some systems, applications and products work to managed services.
The tech personnel changes come as Nike shut down virtual experiences and products company Rtfkt, which it acquired in 2021, at the start of the year. The activewear giant had invested in virtual products through the launch of marketplace .Swoosh in 2022 as well, which is still functional.
While virtual efforts seem to have faded somewhat from the retail zeitgeist, artificial intelligence is gaining steam in much of the industry as retailers find both consumer-facing and back-end use cases for the tech. A recent study by Storyblok found that U.S. businesses spent an average of $400,000 on AI last year, while a Capgemini report said more than half (56%) of retailers have increased their gen AI investments since last year.
Nike has not mentioned anything about virtual or artificial intelligence efforts on any of its last four earnings calls.
CEO Elliott Hill, who just arrived in October, has other priorities, though. The executive has been building out his leadership team, rightsizing the brand’s classic footwear franchises, rekindling relationships with wholesale partners and recently, restructuring its teams around key sports.