CogitX AI, a sovereign AI platform company, announced the appointment of Michael Ellgass as President, Retail. Ellgass will lead go-to-market across the company's retail offerings, including marketing, supply chain, and merchandising, with a focus on commerce media. The mandate reflects CogitX's core bet that retailers which own their AI outright, rather than rent it by the token, keep costs flat as adoption grows and build capability that compounds over time. That bet is already in production at one of the world's largest agency holding companies, where CogitX is transforming engagements and workflows with AI powered by the platform. Ellgass joins CogitX from Circana, where, as EVP of Global Commerce Media, he built and scaled the company's retail media business from scratch across North America, EMEA, and APAC, working with retailers such as Sam's Club, Walgreens, Instacart, and Coles. Earlier, he led category marketing at Walmart, building marketing plans with more than 200 brands, and began his career in brand marketing roles at Kraft Foods. CogitX AI is a sovereign AI platform company building the intelligence layer for retail; the intelligence is owned by the retailer, improves with every interaction, and is unmetered, turning a retailer's disparate data sources into one intelligence layer (Retail Brain), with a retail product suite covering commerce media from planning and creation to measurement.