Tracksuit has acquired Sydney startup Hall, adding AI visibility measurement to its brand tracking product.

The deal brings Hall’s technology and team into Tracksuit, including founder Kai Forsyth, who has joined as principal product manager and will lead product direction for AI visibility. Customers will be able to track how their brands appear across AI platforms, compare that visibility with rivals, and monitor changes over time.

The move reflects a wider shift in marketing as AI tools become another way consumers discover and assess brands. Companies have long tracked awareness and perception among people, but the rise of AI search and recommendation systems has created a new challenge: understanding whether brands are being surfaced at all, and whether that portrayal is accurate.

Tracksuit frames the acquisition as an extension of its existing measurement work. Its platform is used by more than 1,000 consumer brands across 25 markets, including the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

AI tracking

Hall focused on measuring how brands appear inside AI platforms. Integrated into Tracksuit’s broader product, that capability is intended to give marketers a view across both human perception and machine-generated visibility.

Tracksuit argues these now represent two separate audiences that can shape brand health. One is made up of consumers responding directly to advertising, products and reputation. The other consists of AI systems that summarise, recommend and rank brands in ways that may influence buying decisions before a consumer reaches a company’s own channels.

Forsyth said Hall’s work suggested short-term fixes mattered less than broader brand investment.

“Building Hall showed us that short-term tactics can spike a brand’s AI visibility, but what actually moves the needle is the brand-building work that makes people already know and trust you,” said Kai Forsyth, founder of Hall and principal product manager at Tracksuit.

“Doing that inside a platform that already has human data on tens of thousands of brands gives marketers a more accurate read on where their brand actually stands and where it’s headed,” Forsyth said.

Connor Archbold, Tracksuit’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said the company sees AI as a new setting in which brand perception develops.

“Brand has always lived in people’s minds. Increasingly, it also lives inside AI,” Archbold said. “The way great brands are built hasn’t changed, but the places they’re experienced have. Our job is to help marketers understand both. Acquiring Hall allows us to combine human perception with AI visibility, giving marketers a more complete understanding of their brand. Together with our new executive leadership team, we’re building the company that is defining the next generation of brand tracking.”

Leadership team

Alongside the acquisition, Tracksuit has completed its executive leadership team as it expands internationally. Over the past six months, the company has added senior leaders through a mix of external hires and internal promotions.

The team now includes Tom Mansfield as chief marketing officer, Dan Fleming as chief operating officer, Anne Dröge as chief product officer, Cara Fonseca-Ensor as chief technology officer, Hamish Mathieson as chief revenue officer and Samantha Gadd as chief people officer, alongside Archbold as chief executive officer.

The appointments suggest Tracksuit is preparing for broader expansion as it widens the scope of its products. For the company, the acquisition of Hall sits alongside the management build-out as part of the same push to grow beyond traditional brand tracking.

Mansfield linked that strategy to the growing importance of brand in a market shaped by AI tools.

“In an AI-enabled world, brand has become one of the last remaining defensible assets for marketers. Tracksuit’s north star is to bring brand data into every boardroom with the world’s most accessible and marketer-friendly brand tracker,” said Tom Mansfield, chief marketing officer at Tracksuit. “I’m excited to help take that story to more marketers around the world, strengthen our category leadership, and build the global brand that matches the ambition of the business.”

Founded in 2021, Tracksuit provides ongoing brand health measurement designed to show not only how a brand is perceived at a given moment, but how that perception changes as channels for discovery and evaluation evolve.

The addition of Hall signals a bet that AI platforms will become a standard part of that picture, requiring the same kind of continuous measurement marketers already expect for consumer awareness and sentiment.

Five locations in Oxfordshire already benefit from the wide array of freshly baked pastries, savoury and sweet treats, bread and coffee served up at Gail’s, and one more is about to join the list.

With a rapid expansion ongoing and more than 180 Gail’s shops across the UK, the upmarket chain bakery has set its sites on the untapped potential of a new site in Oxfordshire.

An announcement advertising new jobs at the site revealed that a Gail’s Bakery will be opening soon at Oxford’s Westgate Shopping Centre.

READ MORE: Historic British shoe chain closes one of its Oxfordshire stores

A new Gail’s Bakery also opened at Banbury Gateway Retail Park earlier this month.

Speaking ahead of the Banbury stores opening Gail’s Operational Manager Bobby Holmes said:”We’re so excited to be opening our doors.

“From freshly baked sourdough and artisan breads to buttery pastries, handcrafted sandwiches, cakes and expertly brewed coffee, everything is prepared with care and baked fresh.

Advertising the job of head baker at the new eatery statement said: “We are looking for Head Bakers who have a passion to join the GAIL’s family and for training and developing others.

“You should be motivated by taking charge and want to be a positive role model.

“With no day being the same, you must be organised and clear talking to maximise your teams’ potential and to deliver our fresh food, bread and cakes to high standards whilst maintaining food safety standards.”

Keepit has made its SaaS data protection platform available through the Pax8 Marketplace, giving Pax8 partners access to its backup and recovery services for cloud applications.

The listing makes Keepit’s service available to managed service providers and channel partners that buy and sell software through Pax8’s marketplace, which focuses on small and medium-sized business customers. Those partners can now offer backup and recovery for a range of SaaS applications used by their clients.

The arrangement covers business software including Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Okta, Jira, Confluence and Docusign. Keepit said its system stores backup data in a separate cloud environment rather than in the production software environment or with the same large cloud infrastructure providers.

Keepit is positioning that separation as a way to address growing concern over how organisations protect data held in software-as-a-service tools. Many businesses now rely on those applications for email, identity, collaboration, customer management and document workflows, increasing scrutiny of recovery planning and compliance controls.

For service providers, the marketplace route could widen access to a segment of the backup market that has become more crowded as software vendors and specialist providers seek a larger share of recurring security and resilience spending. Pax8 has built its business around aggregating cloud software for resellers and managed service providers, giving vendors access to a broad partner base.

Keepit said its platform is designed to help partners extend backup services beyond a single workload. It also cited centralised management, predictable pricing and support for more than 17 SaaS applications as part of its channel offering.

Demand for independent data protection is rising as customers seek to avoid concentration risk in cloud systems, according to Keepit. It also linked that demand to cyber resilience requirements and concerns over threats that could affect the integrity of production data.

Jan Ursi, Global VP of Channels at Keepit, described the marketplace listing as a route to wider partner adoption. “Bringing Keepit to the Pax8 Marketplace is about making it easier for partners to access SaaS data protection built for the cloud – sovereign, unlimited and simplified. Pax8 has strong reach into the MSP partner community, and this availability gives more partners the ability to deliver independent protection and recovery for critical SaaS data – helping their customers stay resilient, compliant and in control,” Ursi said.

Channel focus

The agreement underlines the importance of indirect sales for software vendors in the backup and security sector. Managed service providers increasingly package data protection with migration, monitoring and compliance services, making marketplaces such as Pax8 a route to scale without building a large direct sales operation.

Pax8 said the addition broadens the options available to partners serving customers running a mix of cloud applications. For those providers, backup products that cover several SaaS tools can be easier to bundle than software limited to a single platform.

Phillip Seigenfeld, Global Director, MSP and Cloud Distribution at Keepit, said the company sees a commercial opening in broader SaaS coverage. “Partners need SaaS data protection that is simple to deliver, easy to manage and relevant to how customers actually use cloud applications today. Expanding access through the Pax8 Marketplace helps partners broaden their backup offering while reducing operational friction, and opens a meaningful opportunity to grow across the entire SaaS estate,” Seigenfeld said.

The relationship also adds another data protection vendor to Pax8’s marketplace, where channel partners source cloud software for deployment and management on behalf of customers. Pax8 said more than 47,000 IT partners and 800,000 small and medium-sized businesses use its platform.

That scale matters for vendors seeking to reach service providers already accustomed to buying software through a centralised marketplace. Instead of negotiating individual supplier relationships, partners can add new products to their portfolios through the platform and manage billing through an established process.

Oguo Atuanya, Corporate Vice President of Vendor Experience at Pax8, said the company expects interest from partners serving customers with critical data held in cloud applications. “Keepit brings a compelling SaaS data protection solution to the Pax8 Marketplace, and we’re excited to welcome them into our vendor ecosystem,” Atuanya said. “As partners look for scalable ways to help customers protect critical cloud application data, Keepit’s platform expands the options available through Pax8 and gives MSPs another strong solution for applications their customers rely on every day.”

Keepit’s product is now available through the Pax8 Marketplace.