A Las Vegas Raiders running back just put his name and his money behind a startup aiming to fix one of pro sports' quiet headaches: too many people managing an athlete's career off too many disconnected spreadsheets.
Ashton Jeanty has joined Nukleus, a career operating system for the business of sports, as both an investor and its public face. The announcement comes ahead of the company's public launch later this month, and it's the kind of local business news that resonates well beyond Washington state, where Nukleus is based. The story touches on a challenge familiar to any small business entrepreneur trying to keep agents, accountants, and advisors on the same page: coordination is hard, and most tools weren't built for it.
The Problem Nukleus Says It Solves
Every professional athlete operates like a small business, whether they realize it or not. There's an agent negotiating contracts, a lawyer reviewing terms, a CPA handling taxes, a financial advisor managing investments, and often a marketing team chasing endorsement deals. Historically, those professionals have worked in silos, trading emails, PDFs, and phone calls instead of pulling from one shared source.
Nukleus was built to close that gap. The platform gives everyone in an athlete's orbit access to the same data at the same time, replacing scattered communication with a single system.
"The athlete is the nucleus. Everyone around them, from agents and lawyers to brands and advisors, should be operating off the same information, not chasing it down separately every time something changes," said Hector Rivas, founder and CEO of Nukleus. "I've spent years around the business of sports, watching deals, data, and decisions get lost between people who know they'd be better off working together, but never had a way to actually do it. Nukleus is the system that keeps them on the same team."
Why Jeanty Signed On
Rivas built his perspective on the industry after founding and running a sports agency, giving him a view into every corner of the business rather than just one piece of it. That background now informs Nukleus's AI infrastructure, which draws from a knowledge base covering collective bargaining agreements, contract structures, and athlete benefits.
For Jeanty, the appeal was personal.
"Coming into the NFL, you become a CEO, directing a team of agents, advisors, and marketers, whether you're ready or not. Nukleus is what finally gets them all on the same page, so I can actually run that team the way it should be run. That's why I invested in it," said Jeanty.
A Platform Built for the Whole Team, Not Just the Athlete
What sets Nukleus apart from athlete-only apps is its structure. Athletes join for free, while the professionals who serve them, including agents, CPAs, financial advisors, marketing agencies, brand collectives, trainers, and lawyers, subscribe to run their side of the business through the platform.
The leadership team brings experience from outside sports as well as inside it. Rivas previously led ThriftBooks to more than $150 million in annual revenue. CTO Eric Ahlstrom has worked at ESPN, Microsoft, and Oracle. Chief Creative Officer Ben Miller previously served as creative director for University of Washington Football and CAA Sports. CFO Matt Porter was formerly Controller at Disruptive Sports.
Nukleus opens to the public later this month, with more details available at nukleus.co.
Why This Story Matters Beyond the NFL
Stories like this one matter to more than football fans. They're a reminder that even at the highest levels of professional sports, the same operational headaches that hit local businesses, disconnected tools, miscommunication, and duplicated work, show up again and again. Solving that problem for a Raiders running back isn't so different from solving it for a small business entrepreneur juggling a bookkeeper, a marketing consultant, and a lawyer.
This kind of business spotlight is exactly what Local Business Press aims to deliver: local businesses, national business, and everything in between, wherever a compelling growth story appears. Whether readers are here for community events, local deals, small business news, or updates from the world of local commerce, the goal stays the same: helping people discover and support the businesses shaping their communities.
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