Placer.ai, the location analytics company founded by Israelis, announced that Jigso co-founders Or Shani and Tomer Naveh are joining it along with the AI specialists they assembled at Jigso. Shani becomes Executive in Residence for business development and Naveh VP R&D, AI Actions.
To be precise, this is not an acquisition of Jigso. According to the announcement, Jigso will continue as a separate company, and neither the number of employees moving nor any financial arrangement was disclosed. It resembles what the industry calls an acqui-hire, bringing over a whole team, typical of the AI talent race.
The pair are not new to the field. They previously founded Albert.ai, an early autonomous AI platform for advertising that went public and was later sold. Jigso builds a platform that connects to enterprise systems, surfaces insights and anomalies and suggests actions.
'Great AI needs great, unique data, and Placer.ai has it,' Shani said. Placer.ai collects foot-traffic data on stores, malls and buildings and sells it to retailers, real estate firms and investors. The goal, the announcement suggests, is to turn that data from reports people read into agents that recommend, and perhaps take, actions.
