Our Story

Hydrogen Sports began in a garage workshop—where prototypes were sketched, reworked, and reimagined with a single goal: to build the best ball machine possible. In 2018, we officially launched. By early 2020, we were shipping our first machines. Today, nearly 7,000 have been assembled and shipped from our Santa Clara, California facility.

Meet the Founder

The Proton was designed by our founder, Jonah Harley, an avid tennis player with a serious engineering pedigree. Before launching Hydrogen Sports, Jonah spent nearly a decade at Apple, where he led teams focused on input devices and haptics. He’s the original inventor of the Apple Pencil and holds over 50 patents. Jonah holds degrees from Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Caltech—but it’s his passion for racquet sports that drives our product innovation every day.

What We’ve Built So Far

• Shipped nearly 7,000 machines across the U.S. and Canada

• Expanded sales to Canadian customers in 2024

• Engineered the Electron—our new pickleball machine—to meet the needs of the fastest-growing sport in North America

What’s Next

We’re just getting started. Our mission is to keep pushing the boundaries of training technology for racquet sports. That means new products, smarter features, and tools that help players of all levels train with purpose. We believe great practice makes great players—and we’re here to make practice better.

Concept
Early mockup, internal codename: Proton Collider. It wasn’t pretty—but it proved the concept

Beta Parts
Beta parts, workshop table. Every piece tested, tweaked, and rethought—over and over again

Production
The first production run—fresh shells and chassises lined up, ready to become Protons

Beta
One of our earliest beta units-scrappy, but definitely the start of something great