NZ artificial intelligence firm Soul Machines scores $60m from big-name investors

Friday, 10 January 2020

Kiwi artificial intelligence company Soul Machines explained last year how it hoped to give humanity 'a shot at immortality'.

Auckland University spin-off Soul Machines, which designs virtual, digital assistants to 'humanise' computerised customer service tools, has raised US$40 million (NZ$60m) to continue its overseas expansion.

The company employs 120 staff in New Zealand, Australia and the United States and its customers include consumer goods giant Proctor & Gamble and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Soul Machines said in a statement that the new funding from venture capital funds and existing investors would allow Soul Machines to increase its research and development and scale-up its business around the world 'to meet growing demand'.

Its new investors include European venture capital firm Lakestar which was an early investor in Skype, Spotify, Facebook and Airbnb, and the venture capital arm of Salesforce, the dominant provider of cloud-based online customer relationship management software.

Soul Machines chief executive Greg Cross, pictured with one of the company's avatars, said investment will be used for R&D and expansion.

* Would you pay to immortalise yourself in a digital forever?

* Air NZ's 'Sophie', Vodafone's 'Kiri' - ever noticed that most virtual helpers are female?**

Soul Machines said its goal was to 'bring technology to life' by creating lifelike, emotionally responsive, 'digital heroes with personality and character' that allowed machines to talk to people 'face-to-face', saying its vision was to 'humanise artificial intelligence to better humanity'.

Chief executive Greg Cross said it believed Lakestar, Salesforce Ventures and fellow new investor Temasek were the perfect partners to help the company expand.

He was not allowed to disclose the company valuation implied by the capital raising.

'The market for artificial intelligence technologies in general is still at a relatively early stage,' he said.

'The research we are doing in 'artificial general intelligence' in particular is world-leading and that is technology that is becoming more relevant as innovative companies start to think about how they are going to humanise their brands and democratise the customer experience.'

There were lots of other avatar and computer graphics businesses that were trying to do similar things 'but what really makes us unique is the work we are doing in neuroscience, cognitive science and developmental psychology', he said.

There was no agreement or understanding Salesforce would offer Soul Machines' technology as part of its cloud-based service, but the companies were exploring ways to partner and its investment was a huge endorsement, he said.

'What we are doing is strategically aligned with what they are already doing in the AI space with their own platform, Einstein.'