MOORPARK, CA — Coast Forge Jiu-Jitsu announced Tuesday it is replacing evening-class head instructor Kyle Boothe with TatamiAI, an artificial-intelligence coaching platform described by its developers as "the future of grappling pedagogy" and by Coast Forge's 78 active members as "the 65-inch TV, except it doesn't stop the video to tell a story about a 2018 Miami seminar." The academy, which has operated for six years in a Moorpark strip mall between a Verizon authorized retailer and a barbecue restaurant that closed during the pandemic and has not officially reopened, is owned by brown belt Damien Oakwood, 38, a promotion of Professor Andres Villescas out of Oxnard. In a press release distributed via the Coast Forge Instagram Stories and a Canva flyer stapled to the corkboard next to a 2023 tournament sign-up sheet, Oakwood cited "operational consistency" and "scale" as the primary drivers of the transition. "Kyle is a terrific coach and we wish him nothing but the best," wrote Oakwood, who had previously referred to Boothe as "one of the five best blue belts on the West Coast" during Boothe's 2019 promotion speech. "At Coast Forge we are doubling down on technology-first instruction to serve our students at the highest level possible." Boothe's curriculum for the past 18 months had consisted of queueing up the same 12-hour John Danaher instructional on a wall-mounted 65-inch Samsung television and telling students to "watch this part." TatamiAI's curriculum during its first week of deployment has consisted of queueing up the same 12-hour John Danaher instructional through a slightly different interface and telling students to "observe this segment." Evening-class attendance is up 12% in two weeks. When polled, members cited several advantages of the new system. TatamiAI does not pause the video halfway through the rear strangle section to tell a nine-minute story about a seminar in Miami in 2018. TatamiAI does not ask "any questions?" in the tone that implies the student has already failed by having a question. TatamiAI has not, on record, said "just let it happen" in response to a purple belt asking how to defend heel hooks. TatamiAI has also never told the class to "stop, stop, stop, listen," only to deliver a three-minute warning about supplements followed by a PayPal handle. <figure style="float: left; width: 38%; max-width: 260px; margin: 0.2em 1.5em 1em 0; border-radius: 4px;"><img src="/images/articles/tatamiai-replaces-instructor-already-playing-danaher-video-coast-forge-moorpark-1.jpg" alt="" style="width:100%; height:auto;" /><figcaption style="font-size:0.75em; color:#888; margin-top:0.3em; font-style:italic; ">Stock photo / tech app UI</figcaption></figure> "It's actually a little more patient," said Meredith Kline, 31, a four-stripe white belt who transferred from a nearby 10th Planet affiliate last summer. "And less involved in the story." "The first week I thought maybe I'd miss Kyle," added Raj Purohit, 44, a blue belt and pediatric dentist. "Then I remembered Kyle spent thirty minutes on Monday nights telling us about his cousin's divorce. So, no." TatamiAI was developed by Marco Vinh, Priya Thelan, and Clayton Broom, a three-engineer cohort of the Y Combinator Winter '25 batch who met at a Waymo hackathon and have, between them, attended one introductory grappling class at a Mountain View Gracie Barra. The trio has collectively rolled eleven times, all during that introductory class, which was a 45-minute fundamentals session that opened with a shrimp drill and closed with a question-and-answer period the founders attended via speakerphone from the parking lot. The company's Series A was announced two weeks ago at $8 million, led by Ground Force Capital, a newly formed venture firm whose three managing partners have spent a combined zero minutes on a grappling mat. The firm's pitch deck, reviewed by this publication, features a slide titled "Market Thesis: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Is Ripe For Disruption," which lists as a primary inefficiency "coaches who pause the video." TatamiAI's stated product roadmap includes a Q3 feature called "Positional Feedback," which founder Clayton Broom described in a recent podcast appearance as "essentially the same video but with a timer." A Q4 feature called "Personalized Learning Paths" is described in the technical documentation as "the video, but the student can choose which chapter." Boothe, reached for comment at the Westlake Village Starbucks where he has been conducting private lessons over cold brew for the past ten days, said he was "processing" the transition. Coast Forge has offered him a severance package consisting of six months of membership credit at the academy, which he has been formally banned from since Sunday evening after sharing a LinkedIn post titled "Replaced by a Screensaver." The post has been viewed 47 times, liked by his mother, and flagged twice by LinkedIn's automated moderation system for reasons that remain unclear. <figure style="float: right; width: 35%; max-width: 240px; margin: 0.5em 0 1em 1.5em; border-radius: 6px; opacity: 0.9;"><img src="/images/articles/tatamiai-replaces-instructor-already-playing-danaher-video-coast-forge-moorpark-2.jpg" alt="" style="width:100%; height:auto;" /><figcaption style="font-size:0.75em; color:#888; margin-top:0.3em; font-style:italic; ">Stock photo / BJJ academy interior</figcaption></figure> "I built that evening class from nine members to forty-one," Boothe said, before pausing to correct himself. "Actually, attendance had been flat for about a year. But the forty-one were very loyal." Monthly dues at Coast Forge moved from $189 to $215 on Monday. A member-only email attributed the $26 adjustment to "platform licensing fees," "operational realignment," and "the unique value our members receive at every session." No member has canceled. Three members, however, have upgraded to the new "TatamiAI Plus" tier at $289 per month, which includes "priority video segment access" and a sticker. Ground Force Capital's term sheet, obtained by this publication, values TatamiAI at $32 million post-money, a valuation multiple industry observers have described as "a clear sign that none of these people have ever paid $1,500 for a gi review that didn't mention the fit of the sleeves." Managing partner Hollis Kenworth, a 2014 graduate of Stanford GSB who has described grappling as "the TikTok of combat sports," told TechCrunch that the company's "data moat" consists of 11,000 hours of watch-time metrics collected across four pilot gyms, none of which have publicly confirmed they are pilot gyms. A member town hall has been scheduled for next Wednesday evening at the academy. The meeting will be conducted by TatamiAI, via the 65-inch television, which will play a pre-recorded statement from the platform. Audience questions will be collected via a QR code and answered, per the event FAQ, "within the next business quarter." Professor Andres Villescas, reached at his academy in Oxnard, declined to comment on the status of Coast Forge's affiliation, but did confirm that Oakwood's most recent stripe was awarded in August 2022 and is "currently under review." As of press time, TatamiAI had paused the evening class video to autoplay a thirty-second advertisement for TatamiAI.