Israeli entrepreneurs Or Shani and Tomer Naveh, co-founders of artificial intelligence startup Jigso, are joining U.S. location analytics company Placer.ai alongside a team of AI and machine learning specialists, as the company seeks to expand its use of artificial intelligence in analyzing consumer behavior and business activity.
The two founders, who have spent 16 years developing AI and machine learning products, will work with Placer.ai's existing teams on technology designed to identify patterns, detect unusual activity and generate business recommendations from the company's location data.
Jigso's team
(Photo: Placer.ai)
Placer.ai provides businesses with information about foot traffic and activity at physical locations, including stores, shopping centers, hotels and commercial properties. Its platform is used by more than 5,000 organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, to assess consumer behavior, compare locations and track changes in market activity.
The company is seeking to move beyond conventional analytics, in which customers examine data and draw their own conclusions, toward systems that automatically identify developments that may require attention. These could include unexpected changes in visitor numbers, shifts in consumer patterns or other indicators relevant to business decisions.
Shani and Naveh previously co-founded Albert.ai, an early AI platform designed to automate digital advertising decisions. The company went public and was subsequently sold. They later established Jigso, developing an AI platform that connected to enterprise systems and analyzed business information to identify anomalies, surface insights and support automated actions.
Their work at Jigso focused on applying AI to information already available within organizations, rather than requiring employees to search through multiple systems for relevant data. That experience is expected to inform Placer.ai's efforts to develop more automated analytical tools.
The move comes as businesses increasingly experiment with AI systems that can do more than respond to questions or produce reports. Placer.ai is pursuing a similar approach using its proprietary location data, although the company has not provided a timetable for the introduction of new capabilities resulting from the team's arrival.
"Our ambition was never to be just an analytics platform," said Noam Ben-Zvi, CEO and co-founder of Placer.ai. He said the company had already invested in AI development and that the incoming team would work alongside its existing specialists.
Shani said Placer.ai's data resources were a central factor in the decision to join the company.
"Great AI needs great, unique data, and Placer.ai has it," he said.
The announcement did not specify how many Jigso employees are joining Placer.ai or disclose any financial arrangements associated with the move. It also did not detail which new products or features the team will be responsible for developing.
For Placer.ai, the immediate significance is the addition of an experienced Israeli AI team to an existing development operation. Whether that translates into substantial changes for customers will depend on how effectively the company integrates the new expertise into its platform and turns its ambitions for automated analysis into working products.