CogitX AI Announces Michael Ellgass as President, Retail
On Friday, 18 September 2026, CogitX AI, a sovereign artificial‑intelligence platform company headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, issued a press release stating that Michael Ellgass has been appointed President, Retail. In his new role, Ellgass will lead the go‑to‑market strategy for CogitX’s retail suite, covering marketing, supply‑chain, merchandising and commerce‑media solutions, with a particular focus on Fortune 500 retailers, brands and agencies.
CogitX’s core proposition is that retailers own the AI intelligence outright rather than renting it by the token, thereby keeping costs flat as adoption scales and allowing the capability to compound over time. This model is already deployed at one of the world’s largest agency holding companies, where the platform is rapidly transforming engagements and workflows.
Ellgass joins CogitX from Circana, where he served as Executive Vice‑President of Global Commerce Media. At Circana he built and scaled the retail‑media business from the ground up across North America, EMEA and APAC, collaborating with retailers such as Sam’s Club, Walgreens, Instacart and Coles. Prior to Circana, he led category marketing at Walmart, a discipline that evolved into retail media, designing marketing plans for more than 200 brands. His career began in brand‑marketing roles at Kraft Foods.
"We are excited to have Mike on board," said Pradeep Parappil, co‑founder and CEO of CogitX AI. "Retail is at an inflection point, with new experiences and opportunities powered by AI. Michael has a rare, complete view of how retailers operate and how AI can power what comes next. We look forward to working with him."
Ellgass added, "The industry sells retailers access to intelligence. CogitX sells ownership of it. This is a model that lives inside a retailer's own environment and gets smarter with every interaction, without a bill that scales with success. I believe the retailers that come out ahead in this next chapter will be the ones that own their intelligence rather than rent it."
CogitX AI describes its platform as a sovereign AI layer that turns a retailer’s disparate data sources into a single intelligence layer called the Retail Brain. The suite spans the full span of commerce media, from planning and creation to measurement, and is offered on an unmetered basis.
For further information, visit www.cogitx.ai. Media contact: Siddharth Mallappa, CogitX, sid@cogitx.ai, +91‑8105406032.