Trax is a

technology company A technology company (or tech company) is an electronics-based technological company, including, for example, business relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce services. Details According to ''Fo ...

headquartered in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

, with offices throughout the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, North America, and South America. Founded in 2010 by Joel Bar-El and Dror Feldheim, Trax has more than 150 customers in the

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

and

FMCG Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), also known as consumer packaged goods (CPG), are products that are sold quickly and at a relatively low cost. Examples include non-durable household goods such as packaged foods, beverages, toiletries, cand ...

industries, including beverage company

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...

and brewer

Anheuser-Busch InBev Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV, commonly known as AB InBev, is an American-Belgian multinational drink and brewing company based in Leuven, Belgium. AB InBev has a global functional management office in New York City, and regional headquarters ...

. Customers use the company’s

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

technology to collect, measure, and analyze what’s happening on physical store shelves. Trax’s services are available in 45 markets. Trax's development center opened in July 2012 in Tel Aviv. In 2015, the company opened its first two regional offices:

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in January and

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for 'Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the GaWC a ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, in April. In March 2016, Trax established its US headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. The company opened two more regional offices in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

and

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

in June and September 2016, respectively.

Funding

Trax closed its first round of funding (

seed round Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...

) for US$1.1 million in June 2011. In Aug 2013 it raised US$6.6 million in

Series A A series A round (also known as series A financing or series A investment) is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

financing, and US$15.7 million in February 2014 and US$15 million in December 2014 as part of its

Series B A venture round is a type of funding round used for venture capital financing, by which startup companies obtain investment, generally from venture capitalists and other institutional investors. The availability of venture funding is among the ...

round. In June 2016 and February 2017 the company raised US$40 million and US$19.5 million respectively as part of its Series C round, led by Broad Peak Investments. In July 2019, it raised $100 million in a series D round led by Chinese alternative asset manager Hopu Investments. In April 2021, it raised $650 million in a series E round led by

SoftBank Vision Fund The SoftBank Vision Fund is a venture capital fund founded in 2017 that is part of the SoftBank Group. With over $100 billion in capital, it is the world's largest technology-focused investment fund. In 2019, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was founded. T ...

and

BlackRock BlackRock, Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multi-national investment company based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a Enterprise risk management, risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackR ...

Organizational changes

Trax announced key organizational changes in February 2021. Justin Behar is now the Chief Executive Officer. Behar joined Trax in 2018 as part of Trax’s acquisition of Quri, a company he founded. Trax co-founders Joel Bar-El and Dror Feldheim are appointed Executive Chairman and President respectively. Bar-El heads efforts on corporate strategy, long-term vision and innovation and shareholder value creation. Feldheim leads new growth initiatives, global partnerships/alliances and M&A.

Mergers and acquisitions

Trax has made 7 acquisitions since its inception: On July 12, 2017, Trax announced that it had acquired Nielsen Store Observations (NSO) project-based services in the US from

Nielsen Corporation The Nielsen Corporation, self-referentially known as The Nielsen Company, and formerly known as ACNielsen or AC Nielsen, is a global marketing research firm, with worldwide headquarters in New York City, United States. Regional headquarters for ...

. On January 18, 2018, Trax announced that it had acquired US-base
Quri
a provider of crowdsourced data on in-store conditions for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. In June 2019, Trax announced its acquisition o
LenzTech
a Chinese-based company providing

artificial intelligence (AI) Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, crowdsourcing services, and

Big Data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

analysis to the retail market. In July 2019, Trax announced the acquisition of

Shopkick Shopkick is an American company based in Denver that created a shopping app for smartphones and tablets offering users’ rewards for shopping activities on both online and offline platforms such as walking into stores, scanning items, making in ...

, a US-based company whose shopping app for

smartphones A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, which ...

and tablets allows users to earn rewards for their online and in-store shopping activities.

Partnerships

In January 2019, Trax announced a partnership with Google Cloud Platform. Using Google Cloud Platform, Trax aims to deliver its Retail Watch image recognition product and machine learning capability to retailers to provide real-time shelf insights, such as out-of-stock products.

Products and services

Trax offers Computer Vision-led products and services to CPG manufacturers and retailers. Its products and services fall into several categories: In-store execution, space planning, market measurement & strategy, and store management.

Technology

Trax’s

technology uses

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

, fine-grained image recognition, and

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

engines to convert store images into shelf insights. The technology can recognise products that are similar or identical, such as branded drinks or shampoo bottles but can also differentiate between them based on variety and size. Trax piloted its

machine learning algorithms The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to machine learning. Machine learning is a subfield of soft computing within computer science that evolved from the study of pattern recognition and computational learning the ...

with initial customers, allowing its algorithm to learn about different products. As the company processes more images, the better the technology gets at recognizing the same products in different shapes and sizes.

References

{{reflist Computer vision software Companies of Singapore