Soul Machines Joins AppDirect to Advance the Next Interface of AI: Digital Teammates

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Business Wire
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This acquisition combines Soul Machines' category-defining technology digital teammates with AppDirect's global distribution network to redefine the future of work through human-centered AI

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Soul Machines, the experiential AI company behind autonomous digital teammates, today announced a new chapter following its acquisition by AppDirect, the world's leading B2B subscription commerce platform. By combining Soul Machines' category-defining technology with AppDirect's powerful B2B distribution network, this transaction will help expand a new generation of AI experiences that are more natural, conversational, and accessible for businesses around the world. AppDirect will showcase the next generation of Soul Machines experiences at AppDirect’s annual Thrive conference.



AI has quickly evolved from chatbots to autonomous agents. What comes next is a more natural way for people to interact with AI: persistent, multimodal intelligence that works with employees, engages customers, and builds trusted relationships across text, voice, video and, eventually, robotics. As these systems become more responsive to facial expressions and other nonverbal cues, they evolve from tools to digital teammates, making AI more intuitive, conversational, and accessible wherever trust and empathy matter most in business.

Soul Machines built this technology before the market was ready to adopt it at scale. Founded by two-time Academy Award winner Dr. Mark Sagar, whose facial technology powered Avatar and King Kong, Soul Machines pioneered its patented Digital Brain and Autonomous Animation technology, creating digital teammates that can see, hear, respond, and animate themselves in real time. Until recently, compute costs and latency kept lifelike, real-time AI out of reach for broad commercial adoption. Those barriers are now collapsing.

Digital teammates are especially valuable where important work goes unsupported because time, expertise or staff are limited. Today, Soul Machines gives employees a natural, face-to-face way to access company knowledge, starting with common HR and IT questions. In the near to medium term, these capabilities are expected to expand into learning and development, including training-video creation, live coaching and role-play simulations. Over time, digital teammates will move beyond answering questions and guiding next steps to taking instructions, working across business systems and completing tasks on a user’s behalf, functioning as a virtual team. This makes AI easier to use without requiring people to master prompting techniques or navigate complex workflows.

"Digital teammates go beyond white-collar work. They’re for every type of business that has never had enough people to do all the work that needs to get done,” said Chris Herd, General Manager, Soul Machines. “Digital teammates fill that gap by working alongside employees, so organizations can better serve customers and operate more effectively. Now, a restaurant owner can video chat with a digital teammate and say, 'I need to order more inventory from this supplier,' and the AI can handle the task from there without the owner having to learn prompts or build workflows. Soul Machines built that interface years ahead of the market, and AppDirect gives us the scale to distribute it to millions of businesses."

With its access to more than 16 million subscribers, AppDirect creates a clear path to commercialization through AppDirect's existing ecosystem.

"Our customers told us they wanted AI they could see and talk to long before we went looking for it," said Nicolas Desmarais, Chairman and CEO of AppDirect. "Our job is to make that technology as easy for a business to buy as any other subscription on our platform. Soul Machines is the best in the world at what it does, and we see the opportunity to accelerate the commercialization of a decade of world-class research, delivering market-leading alternatives to products companies already use, alongside new ones only Soul Machines can deliver today."

As AppDirect approaches $1 billion in gross ARR, Soul Machines anchors the company's new flagship offering: first-party AI solutions. Over the next six months, Soul Machines is expected to rapidly expand consumer-grade experiences deployed through business channels, aimed at the moments in every customer relationship where trust decides the outcome, with new products debuting at Thrive 2026.

Soul Machines, which is expected to operate as a standalone business within the AppDirect portfolio, gives AppDirect’s partner ecosystem one of the most differentiated AI products in market to bring to their customers, opening new business opportunities at the front of the video-first AI wave. Soul Machines customers, in turn, gain access to AppDirect's broader platform, which includes new integrations, expanded distribution channels, enterprise-grade commerce infrastructure, and the entire first-party AI portfolio.

Experience a Soul Machines digital teammate at soulmachines.ai.

To see the next generation of human-AI interaction live, register for Thrive 2026.

Additional Resources:

About Soul Machines

Soul Machines is the world leader in the humanization of AI. Its patented Digital Brain and Autonomous Animation technologies power lifelike digital teammates that see, hear and respond in real time, bringing presence and personality to human–AI interactions across text, voice and video. Soul Machines operates as a standalone business within AppDirect’s portfolio. For more information, visit soulmachines.ai.

About AppDirect

AppDirect is a B2B subscription commerce platform company that brings together technology providers, advisors and businesses to simplify how they buy, sell and manage technology. More than 1,000 providers, 14,000 advisors and 16 million subscribers rely on the AppDirect ecosystem of subscription marketplaces to power their innovation, growth and success. For more information, visit appdirect.com, devs.ai and follow us on LinkedIn.


Contacts

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