Soul Machines, a New Zealand-based company that uses CGI, AI and natural language processing to create lifelike digital people who can interact with humans in real time, has raised $70 million in a Series B1 round, bringing its total funding to $135 million. The startup will put the funds toward enhancing its Digital Brain technology, which uses a technique called “cognitive modeling” to recreate things like the human brain’s emotional response system in order to construct autonomous animated characters.
The funding was led by new investor SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with additional participation from Cleveland Avenue, Liberty City Ventures and Solasta Ventures. Existing investors Temasek, Salesforce Ventures and Horizons Ventures also participated in the round.
While Soul Machines does envision its tech will be used for entertainment purposes, it’s mainly pursuing a B2B play that creates emotionally engaging brand and customer experiences. The basic problem the startup is trying to solve is how to create personal brand experiences in an increasingly digital world, especially when the main interaction most companies have with their customers is via apps and websites.
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