🪦 Dead
Soul Machines
Startup failed · Funding Collapse · shut down February 5, 2026
- Born
- Died
- Lifespan
- 10y 1m
- Cause of death
- Funding Collapse
- Killed by
- Itself
- Type
- Startup
A New Zealand maker of AI 'Digital People' avatars, co-founded in 2016 by Greg Cross and Mark Sagar, a two-time Sci-Tech Academy Award winner for facial-capture work at Weta Digital. It raised more than US$135M (about NZ$225M) from backers including Horizons Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Salesforce Ventures and Temasek. On February 5, 2026 KPMG's Leon Bowker and Luke Norman were appointed receivers. On September 28, 2026 AppDirect announced it had acquired Soul Machines on undisclosed terms and would build the avatars into Devs.ai, so the faces live on with a different employer.