Industry veteran Jim Gruskin named new head honcho at First Insight succeeding founder Greg Petro. First Insight, a predictive intelligence platform that helps companies understand what customers are likely to choose before making significant commercial investments, has appointed Jim Gruskin as Chief Executive Officer. Gruskin has three decades of experience building and scaling businesses centred on AI and data. He succeeds Founder Greg Petro. Gruskin has spent his career as an executive, investment banker and investor. He led Global Knowledge and served on the executive team of its parent, Skillsoft. He previously held senior strategy and finance roles at Dex One and worked as a media and technology investment banker at Morgan Stanley as well as an investor at Prudential Capital. Gruskin says: "What attracted me to First Insight was not simply its technology. It was the combination of nearly two decades of predictive modelling, direct feedback from real people and proof that better customer evidence can change where a company invests. That foundation is difficult to replicate, and it has become more valuable as customer behaviour changes faster, companies face more choices, and leaders face greater pressure to produce measurable returns from AI and make decisions quickly, with little margin for error. "Our next chapter is about building on what our customers already rely on, making that intelligence easier to use and bringing it into the workflows where consequential decisions are made. When the evidence shows stronger demand, companies can invest with greater confidence. When consumers see less value, teams can change direction before development costs, inventory or marketing dollars are locked in. That is how First Insight turns customer intelligence into financial impact." "I've backed technology companies for 35 years, and the ones that break out get two things right: a product the market truly needs, and leadership that can take it to full scale," says Barry Goldsmith, Operating Partner and Co-Founder at Updata Partners and a member of First Insight's board of directors. "First Insight has established a strong position in its market with global reach. Jim is the right CEO to build on that and accelerate what's next. We are proud to support this team." 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards The awards are now open for entries and celebrate global retail technology innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world. Its winners will be revealed at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London on Wednesday, 4th November. Its 2025 hall of fame entrants were revealed during a sold out event which took place at The HAC on 16th October and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by award winning comedian, actress and writer Tiff Stevenson. In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: "This is the awards' fifth year as a physical event. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA's HQ in the West End." "But I'm conscious of the fact that, to quote the legend that is Taylor Swift, You're only as hot as your last hit, baby. So, this year we've moved to our biggest venue yet, and also pulled in our largest number of entries to date and broken attendance records." He added: "This year's submissions have without doubt been our best yet. To quote one of the judges: The examples of innovative developments across both traditional and digital retail spaces were truly remarkable." Congratulations to its winners, and a big thank you to its sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Tiff Stevenson, and all those who attended its 2025 gathering.

Major retailers pilot first Insight's predictive AI copilot ellis ahead of 2026. AiNews.com mentions first Insight | major retailers pilot first Insight's predictive AI copilot ellis ahead of 2026 as the 2026 planning season ramps up, major retailers are turning to AI copilots like first Insight's ellis to make faster, smarter merchandising decisions that protect margins and anticipate shifting consumer demand. Key takeaways: first Insight's ellis AI copilot * First Insight has launched the beta of ellis, a predictive retail LLM that serves as a conversational AI copilot. * several major retailers are testing ellis during the 2025 holiday season ahead of its january 2026 public release. * ellis helps retailers optimize pricing, promotions, product lineups, and demand forecasting. * the AI tool aims to compress planning cycles from 6 - 9 months down to as little as 2 - 4 weeks. * ellis builds on first Insight's voice of the customer platform, which aggregates insights from 360+ million consumers in 180 countries. AI in retail: major retailers pilot first Insight's predictive copilot ellis as retailers head into the 2026 planning season, several major brands are piloting ellis, the new AI growth copilot from first Insight, designed to transform how companies plan product lineups, pricing, and promotions. The beta rollout of ellis marks the debut of what first Insight calls the first predictive retail large language model (LLM) - a system purpose-built to turn customer feedback and market signals into actionable retail decisions in real time. "Retail doesn't win on intuition anymore," said greg petro, CEO of first Insight. "Ellis turns signals into decisions - on product, price and promotions - at the moment retailers need them most and with a competitive understanding never before available. It's about speed with confidence: protecting margins, finding growth and staying in step with customers as they shift." First Insight's retail partners will have access to the beta version of ellis throughout the 2025 holiday season, ahead of the AI copilot's full public launch in january 2026. Inside ellis: the predictive retail copilot ellis operates as a conversational copilot within first Insight's decision intelligence platform, allowing retailers to ask questions in natural language and receive ai-powered, predictive, data-backed answers within seconds. Instead of relying on static dashboards, retail teams can interact directly with ellis to evaluate product concepts, pricing thresholds, and demand forecasts - enabling faster, more confident decisions that directly influence holiday performance and next-season product lineups. The beta release allows participating retailers to test ellis across five key areas of retail growth: * strategic planning: retailers can identify whitespace opportunities, forecast demand, and stress-test decisions - cutting traditional go-to-market timelines from months to weeks. * product validation: ellis helps teams confirm whether product and assortment concepts align with real consumer sentiment before committing budgets. * pricing and promotions: the system evaluates how consumers respond to different price points, pricing thresholds, and promotions - determining pricing elasticity and margin protection strategies. * demand forecasting: ellis refines inventory planning and supply chain alignment by predicting realistic demand patterns. * go-to-market execution: retailers can test creative assets, visual displays, and campaigns against predictive consumer signals before full-scale rollout. Built for retail: the first predictive retail LLM unlike general-purpose AI models trained on scraped internet data, ellis is trained specifically for retail applications, drawing from first Insight's proprietary consumer decision data across thousands of products and customer sentiment in categories such as apparel, footwear, grocery, home goods, QSR, and CPG. This targeted training enables ellis to translate real consumer feedback, pricing trends, and market signals into specific, actionable recommendations for product planning, pricing, and marketing execution. The company positions ellis as the first AI copilot designed to deliver measurable retail outcomes - helping retailers move faster, reduce risk, and defend margins in a competitive environment. First Insight's platform and reach founded in 2007, first Insight now supports over 600 global retailers and brands, including under armour, woolworths, and family dollar. The company's voice of the customer platform collects insights from a network of 360+ million consumers, covering 180 countries and 67 languages. Its proprietary value score(tm) assigns a predictive rating to every product tested, allowing retailers to anticipate performance, optimize pricing, and align inventory with projected demand. Q&A: understanding first Insight's ellis Q1: what is ellis? A: ellis is first Insight's AI growth copilot, powered by a predictive retail large language model (LLM) that helps retailers make data-driven product, pricing, and demand decisions. Q2: who is testing ellis? A: several major retailers are piloting ellis during the 2025 holiday season ahead of its public launch in january 2026. Q3: how does ellis improve decision-making? A: ellis provides instant predictive insights via conversational prompts, reducing planning cycles and improving confidence in product, pricing, and promotional decisions. Q4: what makes ellis different from other AI tools? A: unlike generic AI, ellis is built as a retail-specific LLM trained on proprietary consumer and product decision data across thousands of categories. Q5: what is first Insight's broader impact in retail? A: first Insight helps more than 600 retailers worldwide translate customer feedback into profitable strategies using ai-driven decision intelligence. What this means: ai-driven retail planning becomes reality the pilot of ellis marks a pivotal step in retail's ongoing shift from intuition-led decision-making to data-driven, ai-assisted planning. By combining predictive analytics with conversational interaction, first Insight is giving merchants and planners an operational edge - helping them act on insights in seconds rather than months. For retailers under mounting margin pressure, ellis could become the blueprint for next-generation merchandising, where AI copilots continuously translate consumer signals into smarter, faster, and more confident business moves. Read on ainews.com. Tariffs & trust: why retailers risk loyalty with price hikes. First Insight surveyed 3,000+ global consumers and 300+ retail executives to uncover a critical divide: while most shoppers say they'll abandon brands over price hikes, executives plan to raise prices anyway. First Insight, Inc. 8000 Brooktree Road Suite 100 Wexford, PA 15090