The news
AppDirect announced the Soul Machines acquisition on September 28, 2026, buying the maker of lifelike AI avatars for undisclosed terms. The business-to-business subscription commerce platform plans to build the avatars into Devs.ai, its platform for creating business AI applications.
Soul Machines builds what it calls digital teammates: animated, human-like characters that see, hear and respond in real time across text, voice and video. The company said they run on patented technologies it calls Digital Brain and Autonomous Animation. Under the deal, Soul Machines will operate as a standalone business inside AppDirect's portfolio, according to the announcement.
AppDirect said embedding the avatars in Devs.ai will let customers deploy branded AI applications without handling the underlying technology themselves. The companies listed customer support, self-service, onboarding, training, employee help desks and digital commerce as target uses. In a separate release, Soul Machines said its technology currently handles common HR and IT questions for employees.
Nicolas Desmarais, AppDirect's chairman and CEO, said Soul Machines helps make AI "more useful and more accessible for businesses." Chris Herd, Soul Machines' general manager, said the next phase of enterprise AI will be shaped by how people experience the technology, not only by what it can do.
The deal follows a difficult stretch for Soul Machines. The company was founded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2016 as a University of Auckland spinout and went into receivership on February 5, 2026, when KPMG's Leon Bowker and Luke Norman were appointed receivers, according to B2B News. The outlet reported that Soul Machines had raised about $135 million and that its headcount fell from 253 in July 2023 to 45 just before receivership. Neither company release mentions the receivership or who sold the business.
AppDirect presented its reach as the route to selling the product. It says its ecosystem includes more than 1,000 providers, 14,000 advisors and 16 million subscribers, and that it is approaching $1 billion in gross annual recurring revenue (ARR), a measure of yearly subscription revenue.
The numbers
- Deal value
- Not disclosed
- AppDirect subscribers (company figure)
- More than 16 million
- Advisors in AppDirect's network (company figure)
- 14,000
- AppDirect gross ARR (company statement)
- Approaching $1 billion
- Soul Machines funding raised, per B2B News
- About $135 million
- Soul Machines receivership date, per B2B News
- February 5, 2026
Why CEOs should care
For customer-experience and HR leaders, avatar interfaces are about to arrive through channels you may already buy from. Companies that source software through AppDirect's advisors should expect Soul Machines pitches. Before a pilot, ask how the avatar hands a conversation to a human, what each interaction costs, and how results are measured against an existing text chatbot. The companies' own list of uses, from help desks to onboarding, is a reasonable place to start testing.
CFOs and procurement teams should weigh vendor stability. Soul Machines went through receivership and deep staff cuts before this sale, according to B2B News, and it now sits inside a larger owner. That can reduce some risk, but ownership changes often reshape roadmaps and pricing. Existing Soul Machines customers should confirm in writing that support, service levels and data ownership carry over, and ask what the change of control means for current contracts.
CISOs and privacy teams have a specific issue to examine. Soul Machines says its technology can read facial expressions and other nonverbal cues, which means camera and video data may be processed. Ask where that data is processed, how long it is kept, and how consent is collected. Because Devs.ai lets business teams build their own AI applications, security teams should also set rules on who can deploy customer-facing avatars and with what data.
The bigger picture
Soul Machines' path offers a lesson for AI startups and their backers. According to B2B News, the company raised about $135 million, shrank from 253 staff to 45 and entered receivership. Distinctive technology did not guarantee a sustainable business. AppDirect is betting that pairing the avatars with an established sales network of advisors and providers can succeed where selling them as a standalone product struggled. For buyers, the deal is an example of a specialist AI feature being folded into a larger platform rather than sold on its own.
What’s next
Soul Machines said it expects to expand consumer-grade experiences delivered through business channels over the next six months, with new products set to debut at AppDirect's annual Thrive conference; the releases did not give a date. Watch for pricing, the first named customer deployments on Devs.ai, and whether AppDirect discloses deal terms or headcount plans for the Soul Machines team.
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