"We moved from photographing shelves to analyzing real-time data from basketball courts"
Yoel Bar-El, co-founder of Trax, reflects on the journey of his unicorn and discusses his new ventures: the sports-tech startup Sweesh, which partners with the NBA, and a mentoring center for entrepreneurs.
Trax was one of the prominent examples of the 2021 bubble, where valuation celebrations and secondary deals reached absurd heights. The company, founded by Yoel Bar-El and Dror Feldheim, raised about 1.2 billion dollars throughout its existence, with almost half of that in secondary deals. At its peak, Trax reached a valuation of over 3 billion dollars, and in February 2022, it announced plans for an IPO on NASDAQ. However, like many companies whose value was inflated, it struggled as interest rates began to rise. In May 2024, Bar-El and Feldheim announced their retirement from day-to-day operations.
In an interview with Calcalist, Bar-El summarizes a journey that moved from his childhood in Tel Aviv through the creation of a massive unicorn that changed the retail world, to his new initiatives: the sports-tech company Sweesh and the Bar-El Center.
"At its peak, the company reached sales of 180 million dollars," says Bar-El. "The interest rates that soared in 2022 forced us to do everything to reach operational balance, which mainly meant firing a great many employees. By 2024, we reached operational balance and understood that the best path for the company was to sell it. Unfortunately, it was not to a large technology company, but to an investment fund that connected it to many other companies." Bar-El refuses to comment on the valuation at which Trax was sold, but estimates suggest it was in the hundreds of millions of dollars—a significant drop from the bubble-era peak.
From Retail to Sports-Tech
Trax's technology is based on Computer Vision and AI, providing Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies and retail chains with a real-time picture of store shelves. "We were the pioneers of Retail Tech. We worked directly with Apple to adapt their camera modules to the image processing we developed. The first client to validate the concept was Procter & Gamble, followed by Coca-Cola and the rest of the industry."
After 11 years as CEO and a period as Chairman, Bar-El decided to return to building from scratch. "I didn't want to just manage another big company; I wanted to return to technology, innovation, and building. Two main initiatives were born from this break: Sweesh and the Bar-El Center."
"Sweesh was founded in July 2025 and is a direct continuation of the technological concept I led at Trax. At Trax, we turned the physical world of retail shelves into digital data; at Sweesh, we do exactly the same thing in the world of sports-tech. We use advanced computer vision and data collection to extract real-time data from basketball courts. The system analyzes the game, player movement, and plays, producing deep insights for training and broadcasting."
Regarding partners, Bar-El notes: "Our first client and partner is the NBA. This is a massive expression of trust in our technology. In the first stage, it will be used by schools and colleges. Our economic model involves selling the sensor to each school and charging usage fees for every player who wants data."
A Social Mission
The Bar-El Center is a social-business initiative born from a deep desire to give back to the Israeli high-tech ecosystem. "When I was a young entrepreneur, I received a lot of help and mentoring. Now it is time to pass it on. The center is intended to provide entrepreneurs at the beginning of their path with mentoring, strategic consulting, investor connections, and practical tools on how to build a company from scratch, navigate crises, and grow globally," Bar-El concludes.
