New Aescape CEO Says Company Will Continue Under Revamped Business Model

Frank Britt says the AI-powered robotic massage company has a bright future despite recently entering insolvency proceedings, pointing to high customer satisfaction rates and repeat purchases

After Aescape’s original corporate entity entered insolvency proceedings with more than $150 million in unsecured debt, the brand’s new CEO, Frank Britt, is pushing back on the idea that the AI-powered robotic massage company is out of business.

Britt said Aescape Recovery, the new operating company that now owns Aescape’s technology, intellectual property, hardware and partner network agreements, is trying to move the business forward under a different capital structure, leadership team and go-to-market model.

“The arc of the narrative of somehow the company’s sort of out of business and bankrupt, it’s just preposterous,” Britt, who previously served as Starbucks’ executive vice president and chief strategy and transformation officer, told Athletech News. “We are a company that is growing, we’re adding talent, we have a fortress balance sheet, the rate of growth of the use of the product with consumers is growing.”

“We’re hardly out of business,” he added. “We’re quite the opposite.”

According to creditor documents, Aescape executed a General Assignment in favor of Insolvency Services Group, Inc. on April 3, entering an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors process after an Article 9 foreclosure sale left the original entity as what the filing described as an “assetless shell.”

The filing detailed approximately $152.6 million in unsecured debt and advised creditors that, because substantially all assets had already been foreclosed upon before the assignment, unsecured creditors are unlikely to receive distributions unless additional assets or claims are identified and monetized during the wind-down process.

Britt, however, said the operating business should be viewed separately from the original corporate entity now moving through the ABC process. He said bankruptcy “was never on the table” because the product still had customer demand, repeat usage and high satisfaction.

“A business that has high customer satisfaction rates and repeat purchases, why would that business go out of business?” Britt said.

Aescape, founded in 2017 by Eric Litman, developed AI-powered robotic massage beds designed for use in fitness, hospitality and wellness environments. The company secured placements inside premium fitness operators including Equinox and Life Time, along with luxury hotels, and last year acquired the exclusive rights to Tom Brady’s recovery and pliability protocols, naming Brady as its chief innovation officer.

But according to Britt, the original company’s problem was not the consumer experience, but the business model.

“They had the wrong go-to-market model, which they’ve now pivoted,” Britt told ATN.

Under the prior model, Aescape largely sold access to its robotic massage beds through a licensing or “robotics-as-a-service” structure. Britt said that approach left the company bearing the high upfront cost of building, deploying and supporting hardware while collecting customer payments over multiple years.

That model, he argued, made the business too capital-intensive for a venture-backed hardware company.

“The burden of maintaining the product and all the infrastructure continued to be retained by the company that has a high cost of capital,” Britt said, adding that many enterprise customers have a lower cost of capital and are more accustomed to buying equipment outright.

Aescape Recovery is now shifting to what Britt described as an “equipment-plus-platform” model.

Operators buy the robotic massage bed upfront, either directly or through third-party financing, while also paying for a required service platform that includes technical support, remote diagnostics, software and content updates, uptime commitments and operational support.

The company has also lowered the price of the equipment compared with its earlier market approach, Britt said, and believes the new structure can reduce monthly costs for existing customers by roughly 30% to 40% if they convert from the legacy licensing model.

A former Aescape executive who worked in partnerships and requested anonymity to discuss internal company matters said the old model created real friction with hospitality operators, particularly because many hotels and spas were not used to taking on long-term leases for wellness equipment.

“Hospitality doesn’t like to pay leases,” the former executive told ATN. “They also don’t like contracts that you can’t get out of.”

The former executive said the earlier pricing was difficult for some properties to absorb and that the inability to buy the system outright “did put a damper on sales.”

The former executive also said Aescape’s early deployments revealed important lessons about where the product fit best. While the technology generated excitement, placing the robotic massage system inside spa treatment rooms could create an awkward comparison with human therapists and limit revenue potential for some operators.

“Having them in (more) fitness centers would have been a better fit,” the former executive said.

Britt said Aescape Recovery has gone to existing customers with the new model, including operators already using Aescape beds. Customers are not required to convert immediately, and some remain in pilot arrangements or may need to wait for future capital expenditure cycles before buying the equipment.

“There’s no change at all, except to go to them and say, ‘Would you like to pivot from a licensed model to buy the equipment?’” Britt said.

Britt said Aescape has “lost no customers” among major hospitality and premium health club brands, though he acknowledged some modest churn among smaller operators. The company says it now has more than 130 deployments, is targeting more than 200 by year-end and delivers roughly 12,000 sessions per month.

Britt said Aescape Recovery has also made significant internal changes. The company has reduced its workforce by more than 50%, cut its burn rate by half, kept marketing spend roughly flat and continues to invest in a next-generation product.

About 60% of the company’s current roughly 50-person workforce is focused on the next-generation machine, according to Britt. He said the next version is expected to have a bill of materials that is about 40% to 45% lower by spring 2027 and could weigh closer to 400 pounds, compared with roughly 800 pounds for the current model.

The company is focused on three core metrics over the next year, Britt said: selling more units, increasing repeat consumer usage and reducing the cost of producing the machine.

Aescape Recovery is also looking to expand beyond the massage session itself. Britt said the company plans to launch new offerings around outcomes and body data, with a longer-term goal of giving consumers more insight into flexibility, stiffness and other recovery indicators.

“Our vision would be that in the same way that Whoop started as a diagnostics company and became a services company, we’re a services company that will eventually offer health intelligence and diagnostics,” Britt said.

Still, the restructuring leaves unresolved questions for prior stakeholders. Britt said no shareholders in the original Aescape entity received money through the process.

“No shareholder from, you might call old Aescape, we internally call ‘Oldco,’ received any money,” Britt said. “All of them lost whatever dollars they had put in, regardless of where they were in the preference stack — common, preferred — everybody lost.”

He added that the company is not dismissing the loss.

“We feel bad, by the way,” Britt said. “We’re not happy about that.”