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Former Cyclingnews editor Peter Stuart and former Head of AI at financial technology firm Capital on Tap, Danny Bellion, have announced the launch of their new cycling media platform, Velora Cycling.
The pair says the platform aims to rethink how cycling journalism is produced, from story discovery to publication, while keeping human editors firmly in control of the final product.
Velora is positioned as both a new voice in cycling media and a test-bed for an AI-integrated publishing platform. They aim to focus on fast, intelligent coverage of professional racing, technology and performance.
Here are the launch details from the release:
A content platform for the AI age
Producing high-quality cycling content is currently extremely time-consuming. Writers and editors spend a huge portion of their time engaging with our tools of production – finding stories, images and interacting with complex content management systems to publish articles.
Velora has set out to rethink productivity and build a new system from the ground up, making the most of AI tools and the latest technology wherever possible. Our mission is simple: How can editors spend as much of their time as possible curating high-quality content?
In going after this goal, the Velora team has been building its platform with the following three guiding principles:
• AI integration – Any repeatable manual tasks are handled automatically, while using AI tools to augment content discovery and research. That frees up our time for creativity.
• Reader Experience – Most online content has remained the same for the past 20 years. Velora is fast, clean, mobile-first and designed specifically for cycling.
• Editorial Autonomy – By building a lean, self‑sustaining operation and diversifying our revenue streams, our business decisions can be led by our editorial ambitions, not the other way around.
Getting the most out of our tools has been central to this. Co-founder Bellion has led the build of Velora’s technology stack, grounded in multi-agent AI pipelines.
“The key is working out what things LLMs are good at versus where human judgment and taste is essential,” said Bellion. “You need to design a system that plays to the strengths of both. If you want to produce the best possible content, you have to get this balance right”.
Together, Stuart and Bellion have developed the website and a custom editorial-facing UI from the ground up.
“We’ve built everything ourselves – the website, the editorial user interface and the automation layer – so we can experiment quickly and see what genuinely helps journalists, rather than forcing them to work around a legacy system. This also gives us flexibility to build around whatever model or framework gives us the best performance”
Automation that supports, not replaces, editors
Rather than treating AI as an add-on, Velora’s platform is designed to use AI at every stage of the publishing process while still giving editors complete control and the choice of how much they want to interact with the underlying tools.
As a writer, you can:
• Skip the CMS entirely if you want – the platform can upload articles, assign them to sections, and handle all required formatting.
• Let the system find, crop and place licensed images that match the story.
• Have SEO fields, metadata and tagging generated and applied automatically.
• Plug into an automated article pipeline that sources news leads, performs additional research and drafts copy that can then be refined by human editors.
Faster, deeper cycling coverage – without losing the human voice
On the editorial side, Velora’s ambition is to use that automation to raise the quality bar while reducing the repetitive tasks typical of editorial work, not to churn out more of the same.
The platform will focus on:
• Daily news and race coverage across the WorldTour and the wider world of cycling.
• Interest-led product and tech stories while providing a broad coverage of new releases and tech trends.
• Data-driven race analysis, explaining how and why races are won – not just who crossed the line first.
• Tech and buying advice built around clear, defensible recommendations and long-term value.
• Evergreen guides on training, travel, nutrition, gravel and ultra-endurance.
“AI can now handle a lot of the work that slows newsrooms down – chasing news, structuring articles, dealing with image libraries and SEO checklists,” said Stuart. “That means a human editor can spend more time focusing on editorial standards, analysis and insight, generating original news, developing a more engaging content plan and really working on what the brand can deliver to the reader more broadly. The automation is there to support judgement, not to replace it.”
A platform with wider ambitions
While Velora’s first priority is to serve cycling fans and the cycling industry, the founders see clear potential for the technology beyond a single sport.
“Cycling will essentially be the test-bed for an AI-driven publishing platform,” said Bellion. “If we can prove that a small, focused team can deliver world-class coverage using this stack, it opens up a lot of possibilities in other specialist media.”
