How Equinox’s CTO is Leveraging AI to Lead in the Longevity Space

Work & Co

How has the role of the technology team been evolving for Equinox in the last decade, and where are you headed in 2025?

Eswar Veluri

Over the past ten years, our journey has been nothing short of transformative. Initially, technology was perceived as a support function, handling basic IT tasks. Back then, marketing teams owned digital assets like the website and app, typical for brand-first companies. Few had yet realized how digital products could transform member experiences and drive business growth through personalization, accessibility, and data-driven insights. But, over time, our team began introducing modern product development approaches, like jobs-to-be-done, user research, A/B testing, design validation, and iterative feature development. These methods elevated the production process and opened new opportunities to deliver measurable impact.

For 2025, it’s the goal of the technology team to stand up a leading product ecosystem that goes beyond answering baseline questions, like what time the club opens, to provide meaningful impact in peoples' lives and help our members achieve this North Star of longevity. We’re at a really fortuitous juncture where we have the ability to derive insights and come up with more contextual recommendations that motivate our members.

But before we could respond to this need, there was the work of acquiring data. First, we curated classes where performance metrics would meaningfully drive member progress. Then we created engaging on-demand content that made these metrics both actionable and motivating through an intuitive digital experience. Finally, we brought this entire ecosystem into our connected cardio equipment—creating an industry-first experience that seamlessly integrates in-person classes, digital content, and equipment-based workouts. We designed and launched a lot of this transformation in partnership with Work & Co. We rolled out our new connected treadmills in clubs everywhere this year. It’s an opus that I’m really proud of.

W&C

What did it take to earn tech’s seat at the table, and stay there?

EV

Our real 'seat-at-the-table' moment came the first time we collaborated directly with the business units to create a strategic planning process, identify opportunity areas, and contribute to the corresponding roadmaps. This allowed us to use our expertise to identify opportunities to not only improve the member experience, but to provide solutions that are deeply integrated in the business’s success.

By aligning our language with broader company goals, shifting from "user stories" to "conversions" and year-over-year comparisons", we built trust and demonstrated how tech could be a true partner in driving success. The more that tech teams understood the overall business metrics and processes, the more collaborative we could be. That’s fundamental to building trust and confidence. It helps everyone feel secure that solutions correspond with opportunity areas based on the best knowledge available. This collaboration fostered a culture where other teams see us as problem-solvers rather than order-takers. The result has been a deeper integration of tech into Equinox's long-term strategy.

W&C

As health-conscious users are turning more and more to AI tools for guidance, how does Equinox view the place of human-first interactions, like coaching, alongside digital?

EV

AI amplifies the value coaches bring, ensuring every member's journey is hyper-personalized. No two users see the same app interface. Each interface is curated based on individual goals and habits. But ultimately, human interaction remains irreplaceable for fostering motivation and accountability.

With the rise of IoT connected devices and an increased willingness to share personal data, the number of inputs we have to be able to contextualize has vastly increased, and that’s exciting. We have the ability to exactly understand and synthesize what each user likes to do at a specific time of day and recommend the most relevant content. Because we understand that everyone’s needs and interests are fundamentally different, there are no two users who open the app and see the same thing as another person—it’s not randomized, it’s personalized.

But, imagine you have an injury or other medical factors, human expertise is extremely important. Not all injuries are the same—coaches can assess the range of motion you have, how to modify your exercise, and keep you motivated. As much as you can enable notifications to tell people what to do, there’s no replacement for having a human being next to you. Our coaches curate training programs and digital tools and augment them by giving motivation, tracking, guidance, habit building, etc.

While Gen-AI isn't yet matching the granular expertise of our coaches, it's revolutionizing how we deliver personalized recommendations. Instead of manually configuring rule-based logic, we can now instantly generate contextual suggestions like ‘yesterday was a leg day, you should focus on stretching’, or ‘your plank time has increased by 10%, your core is improving, maybe next week you can try a medium intensity workout’. But there’s still a wide gulf to compare what a coach can do for coaching vs what AI can do.

W&C

How are you using AI for your own internal teams?

EV

There are two pillars of our AI strategy: personalization for our members and productivity for our internal teams. Internally, when Gen-AI was the shiny new object, it used to be led by the data science team. When we started to explore real use cases, we wanted to make sure it didn’t stay within one group, but exposed to every part of our organization. We want our people, from product managers, to concierges, coaches, and beyond, to use AI in their day-to-day lives and see the benefits of such a tool.

In one example, we’re using Amazon Q to scour JIRA, Confluence and everything else to figure out, did we have this problem before? In a matter of minutes, we can go through 15 years of files, tickets, stories, documents and other things. Think about a maintenance technician who is responsible for bikes, treadmills, and 55 different types of equipment. They have paper manuals physically stored in an office where they need to go. In a few months, they’ll be able to just type in the serial number and error code and instantly access troubleshooting steps. These tools save time and empower every team member, from engineers to concierges, to work smarter.

W&C

You are highly focused on team empowerment. Can you explain what goes into ensuring satisfaction for your engineering team?

EV

I’ve developed a few principles I try to adhere to because my team has given positive feedback. Here's three:

Develop a rapport.

I’ve always made a concerted effort to get to know the people I work with, both my direct reports and all colleagues. Making personal connections—and having something personal to talk about opens the gate for honest conversations. How you talk to your employees informs how they see you. That leads to camaraderie and helps leadership to keep a pulse on what teams and employees have going on. When teams first get to know each other as people, the day-to-day issues become much easier to solve.

Know their motivations.

Every engineer has unique drivers—some thrive on innovation, others prioritize balance. Aligning work with these motivations ensures fulfillment and engagement.

Be transparent.

It’s important to be honest with your teams both about the plans you feel confident in as well as the challenges you haven’t figured out yet. For the latter, sharing a vision for what the end goal should look like—what we ultimately want to do—empowers team members to be creative, solutions-oriented, and share ideas. Collectively, these learnings have proven to be incredibly powerful in leading a successful team.

These principles have not only strengthened our team but also fueled innovation across the board.

Many thanks to Eswar for catching up with us. Discover the Equinox+ app, designed and developed in collaboration with Work & Co.