Greg Cross once helped sell a world in which computers sat on desks and waited to be clicked. Years later, he was selling one in which they looked back. Between the New Zealand launch of Windows 95 and the digital people of Soul Machines lies a career spent trying to make unfamiliar technology feel like something a customer might actually want.
It is an unusual professional progression: software, mobile telecommunications, wireless power, artificial faces. The connective tissue is commercial. Cross has repeatedly worked at the point where a clever idea needs a company, a customer and a reason to leave the laboratory. His partners have included Fady Mishriki, the wireless-power entrepreneur, and Mark Sagar, whose work on digital characters earned two Academy Awards. Cross brought experience of getting technology out into the world.
That experience now includes two very different endings. Apple acquired PowerbyProxi in 2017. Soul Machines, which he co-founded in 2016 and later left, entered receivership in February 2026 before AppDirect announced its acquisition that September. Meanwhile, Cross has started another AI business. A tidy retirement speech will have to wait.
A small country, a large departure lounge
Cross's career began without the reassuring neatness of a master plan. Looking back in a 2020 interview, he was introduced as someone who had left school unsure what he wanted to do. An early influence was Bill Foreman of Trigon Industries, who took him under his wing. Before the AI stages and investor meetings came an apprenticeship in how business worked.
His work with Fact International took New Zealand software into the United States and Europe. The company was acquired by Canada's Geac Computers in 1990. BellSouth followed, then Microsoft New Zealand, where Cross led the business during the launch of Windows 95. The jobs changed; the geographical ambition remained fairly consistent. New Zealand could be home without being the limit of the market.
At Advantage Group, the internet offered another opening. In August 1999, the company announced an agreement with Microsoft New Zealand to develop and operate electronic-commerce services. Cross, then Advantage's chief executive, talked about finding partners in a business environment that crossed national borders. The language belongs to the first internet boom, but the preoccupation is recognisable in his later work: a promising technology becomes useful through partnerships and distribution.
He also spent time in the United States raising capital and working on acquisitions, and became an entrepreneur in residence at a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. Back in New Zealand, his roles included chairing the Icehouse and NZTE's Global Beachhead programme. There was a practical symmetry to it: someone accustomed to taking businesses overseas could help other founders make the journey.
Before the face, the missing cable
PowerbyProxi offered a particularly tangible proposition. Cross and Mishriki co-founded the wireless-power company in 2007, building on research from the University of Auckland. Instead of persuading someone to admire a scientific breakthrough, the business could offer a familiar benefit: transferring electricity without plugging in a cable. A household annoyance had acquired an engineering department.
The technology extended beyond phones. PowerbyProxi developed wireless-power products for consumer and industrial uses. Samsung Ventures invested in 2013. In October 2017, Apple confirmed that it had bought the company, shortly after introducing wireless charging in the iPhone 8 and iPhone X. The purchase price was not disclosed.
The Auckland connection survived the transaction: Mishriki said the company would continue growing there. For Cross, it was another example of a business built around university research reaching an international buyer. It also supplied a useful counterpoint to his next undertaking. Explaining the appeal of fewer charging cables is relatively straightforward. Explaining why software should have a face invites a much longer conversation.
Led Microsoft New Zealand during the Windows 95 launch.
Apple acquired PowerbyProxi, which Cross co-founded.
Founded Eighty20 AI, pursuing customer engagement.
The job vacancy that gave the game away
Soul Machines grew out of Sagar's research at the University of Auckland, including BabyX, an interactive virtual infant. Founded with Cross in 2016, the company combined digital-character expertise with AI to make people on screens who could respond during a conversation. Cross's responsibility centred on the business: finding applications, partners and customers for a new kind of interface.
One revealing detail arrived in a job advertisement. In 2017, Soul Machines was recruiting a creative conversational designer. The requirements included characterisation, concise dialogue and interactive narrative. The business needed someone who could write. A convincing digital person, it turned out, had to do rather more than possess excellent cheekbones.
Cross explained the purpose as creating individual conversations. Even two people asking the same question might bring different expressions and nonverbal signals. The system needed to respond to the encounter as well as the words. The writer's task sat alongside the engineers' work, because an awkward answer remains awkward however impressive the animation.
“There is content in the verbal and non-verbal communication between us that would make that conversation personal.”
Greg Cross, on conversation design, 2017
The applications were often more ordinary than the machinery behind them. Autodesk, Mercedes-Benz and Royal Bank of Scotland became early customers. Nestlé Toll House worked with the company on Ruth, a digital cookie coach who could guide bakers and help troubleshoot. Cross discussed the project with Nestlé's Orchid Bertelsen at CogX. The future had arrived with questions about biscuits.
Ruth makes the commercial idea easier to understand. A brand already has questions to answer and expertise to share. A digital character offers a conversational way to deliver that information. Whether people prefer the encounter is the test. The face is an invitation; the usefulness of what follows determines whether anyone stays.
Fame, multiplied
Celebrity digital twins offered another route. Soul Machines worked with will.i.am, then added projects involving basketball player Carmelo Anthony and golfer Jack Nicklaus. These were intended as interactive representations, able to talk with users using information about the person they portrayed. A fan could ask a question rather than simply watch another clip.
In his 2022 conversations about the business, Cross placed these characters alongside brand ambassadors and digital employees. The underlying commercial question was similar: how do you make a conversation available to many people when the original person cannot be everywhere? Celebrity made the proposition immediately legible, while also making the distinction between a person and their digital representation especially important.
Money followed the ambition. In February 2022, Soul Machines announced a US$70 million round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, bringing its stated total investment to US$135 million. Existing investors included Temasek, Salesforce Ventures and Horizons Ventures. Plans covered enterprise customers, research into its Digital Brain technology and celebrity entertainment. There were several futures competing for space in the same company.
Microsoft became a technology and sales partner too. Soul Machines chose Azure for its main stack, and the relationship included help reaching customers through Microsoft's commercial channels. For Cross, whose career had passed through Microsoft's New Zealand operation decades earlier, the connection now concerned a different kind of computer encounter: an animated conversation in place of a desktop menu.
Total investment reported by Soul Machines in February 2022, after its US$70m Series B1. Capital raised is a financing measure.
A company outlives its founder's chapter
Cross departed Soul Machines in 2023. The company's later difficulties belong in the account of a business he helped create, with the dates kept in view. Receivers were appointed to Soul Machines Limited on 5 February 2026. In September, AppDirect announced that it had acquired Soul Machines and planned to incorporate its avatar technology into Devs.ai.
AppDirect described possible uses in customer support, training, onboarding and commerce. Those are recognisable descendants of the early proposition: put a conversational presence where someone needs help. Ownership and circumstances had changed. The technology would enter another company's distribution network, with another opportunity to find regular uses.
PowerbyProxi and Soul Machines resist a single convenient verdict. One reached Apple; the other passed through receivership and into a new owner's portfolio. Their different paths are part of Cross's record. Building a company around research involves decisions about timing, customers and money that continue long after an arresting demonstration.
Now the question is trust
Cross founded Eighty20 AI in 2024. Its Quantum Social Clubs proposal centres on customer communities, member participation and relationships that organisations can develop through their own data. The company's materials describe AI-assisted discovery, connections between members, creator content and rewards for contributions. Cross is again trying to make a business out of how people interact through technology.
His writing gives the project a more personal vocabulary. He describes wanting online communities with the warmth of places where people spend time together. The emphasis falls on belonging, continuity and rewarding participation. These are aspirations for a product, rather than evidence that software has solved the problem of trust. They do show where he has chosen to direct his attention.
That interest extends to ownership. Speaking at the ANZ Māori Investors Forum in 2025, Cross argued that AI infrastructure offered an intergenerational opportunity for Māori investors. His discussion encompassed data, investment and the ability to participate in decisions about technology. Alongside the customer relationship sits a broader question: who has a say in the systems being built?
In 2019, Cross received the Flying Kiwi Award and entered New Zealand's Hi-Tech Hall of Fame. His career has made him an advocate for taking New Zealand ideas abroad. The latest venture brings him back to an intimate scale: whether someone feels a connection is worth returning to. After desktops, charging systems and digital faces, he is still working on what makes people come back.