digital-humans
(4)
UneeQ
UneeQ builds AI-powered digital humans - lifelike, real-time animated avatars that give chatbots and enterprise AI a human face, voice and body language. Founded in New Zealand in 2009 as FaceMe and now headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company pairs its Synanim synthetic-animation engine and Synapse AI-orchestration brain to deploy digital humans for customer experience, brand engagement and immersive employee training across banking, airlines, telecom, retail, healthcare and government.
Soul Machines
Soul Machines was a New Zealand-founded, San Francisco-headquartered deep-tech company that built lifelike, animated 'Digital People' - AI-driven avatars powered by a patented Digital Brain and Autonomous Animation technology modeled on human neuroscience. Spun out of the University of Auckland by Academy Award-winning technologist Dr. Mark Sagar and serial entrepreneur Greg Cross in 2016, it raised roughly US$135 million to bring emotionally responsive virtual humans to brands like Nestlé, P&G and the World Health Organization. After both founders departed and major customers moved on, the company was placed into receivership in February 2026.
Tavus
Tavus is a San Francisco AI company building the interface for face-to-face conversation between humans and machines. Its Conversational Video Interface (CVI) lets developers add real-time, emotionally aware AI video agents - what Tavus calls PALs - to any app through an API. Backed by CRV, Sequoia, Scale Venture Partners, Y Combinator and HubSpot Ventures, Tavus raised a $40M Series B in November 2025, bringing total funding to roughly $82M.
Fundamental Research Labs
Fundamental Research Labs (formerly Altera) is a San Francisco applied AI research company building autonomous, socially intelligent agents - what it calls 'digital human beings.' Founded by former MIT computational neuroscientist Dr. Robert Yang, the company ships consumer and prosumer products including Shortcut (a superhuman Excel agent) and Fairies (a general-purpose AI assistant), and raised a $33M Series A in August 2025 led by Prosus Ventures.