Soul Machines develops autonomous animated 'digital people' for B2B customer experiences, using CGI, NLP and a Digital Brain powered by cognitive modeling. The company sells emotionally engaging virtual assistants and has deployed products like Yumi (a digital skincare specialist), Ruth (a cookie coach) and Florence (a virtual health worker). It reports measurable lift from deployments, including a 4.6x increase in conversion rate, a 2.3% increase in customer satisfaction and customers being twice as likely to buy after interacting with Yumi. Soul Machines is positioning its tech for service industries, telehealth, entertainment and metaverse use cases, and is working toward higher levels of autonomous animation (planning Level 4 goals-based animation). The startup also intends to build celebrity digital twins and envisions digital replicas trained by user interaction. The company has said it will use new funding to further enhance its Digital Brain and cognitive modeling capabilities. Soul Machines develops an Autonomous Animation platform that enables brands to create digital ambassadors and fully digital service agents to engage customers. The company describes itself as an AGI Research firm spun out of the University of Auckland. Its technology has produced Digital Heroes for global clients across retail, automotive, banking and finance, including Procter & Gamble, Bank ABC and The Royal Bank of Scotland. Soul Machines currently employs over 120 people and maintains offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, London, Tokyo, Melbourne and Auckland. The company says it will use the new funding to continue global expansion with a specific focus on R&D and increasing its operating footprint. Soul Machines develops intelligent, emotionally responsive avatars that augment and enrich user experiences for AI platforms. The company was built as a University of Auckland spinout based on Baby X technology created by Dr. Mark Sagar and his engineering research team at the Laboratory for Animate Technologies in the Auckland Bioengineering Institute. It intends to use the Series A funds to continue developing its avatars. The $7.5M Series A was led by Horizons Ventures with participation from Iconiq Capital. In conjunction with the funding, Phil Chen of Horizons Ventures joined Soul Machines as executive chairman. New Zealand entrepreneur Greg Cross also joined the company to accelerate commercialization; the company is based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Total raised

$118M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Feb 2022