Your supermarket and department store know who you are, what you've bought and where you're shopping next. That may sound invasive, but if it allows you to check out faster and get the products you want cheaper, is it a fair trade-off? Ethan Chernofsky, VP of marketing at Placer.ai, one of the Israeli companies vying to change the brick-and-mortar shopping experience, says yes. Big stores like Target and Walmart already had access to this kind of data through less technical means such as reviewing Mastercard sales reports, Chernofsky tells ISRAEL21c. Emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning will have a strong "democratizing influence that levels the playing field."

Israeli retail analytics insight company Anagog has won the X5 Retail-Tech Challenge competition for retail innovation. The competition was held this week in Tel Aviv by the Israel-Russia Chamber of Commerce, for the X5 retail group, Russia's largest retail chain. Anagog's management are traveling to Moscow to make a pitch to the retail chain's senior executives for a major contract from the chain. Evigence Sensors finished second in the competition and Varcode and Tarritech tied for third place. Anagog was founded in 2010 by Gil Levy and Yaron Aizenbud.

Porsche has bought a minority stake in Tel Aviv-based startup Anagog to expand its expertise in digital technology. Anagog has developed software that analyses user behavior directly in the mobile phone, using sensors, and then predicts future scenarios on the basis of artificial intelligence. In February, Daimler took part in a round of financing for Anagog. Last year, Anagog and Daimler launched the EQ Ready App, which helps drivers decide whether it makes sense for them to switch to greener car technology by recording real journeys and comparing them with electric and hybrid vehicles. "We are keen to work with new companies to continue developing new digital offerings and launch these solutions in the market quickly so that customers can start benefiting from them," Thilo Koslowski, Managing Director of Porsche Digital, a unit of Volkswagen Group's Porsche sports-car business, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Anagog, the leading provider of mobility status services and solutions for mobile apps and Holaverse, a leading mobile app publisher with a portfolio of games and utility apps, announced today their collaboration to include Anagog's Mobility Status SDK in the entire Holaverse portfolio of apps. Omni Swipe, Holaverse's popular accessibility app with over 100 million Google Play downloads worldwide, is the first app to be integrated with Anagog's innovative machine-learning algorithms to provide context awareness and activity classification. Holaverse hopes such smart technology will provide better functionality, convenience, and experiences for its global userbase. "We are very happy to work with Anagog," said Collin Huang, Co-Founder at Holaverse. "We found their technology to be a diffenetiator when it comes to providing the right service to our users at the right time and in the right place."