Real-time digital humans that talk, listen and react like people - so a chatbot becomes a conversation.
Founded 2009 (as FaceMe) · Led by founder Danny Tomsett
Most of the tech world is racing to bolt a large language model onto a text box. UneeQ asked a different question: what if the AI had a face?
UneeQ builds digital humans - AI-driven, photoreal avatars that appear on a screen, speak in a natural voice, read the rhythm of a conversation and respond with the small human tells we barely notice: a blink, a breath, a shift of weight. The company's pitch is deceptively simple. Behind every chatbot sits language and logic; UneeQ adds presence. A visitor doesn't read a reply - they watch someone say it.
The idea has a long runway. UneeQ began in 2009 in New Zealand as FaceMe, a service for live video chat with real customer-service agents. That business didn't scale the way founder Danny Tomsett hoped, so around 2015 he inverted the premise: what if the person on the other end of the video wasn't a person at all, but an AI wearing a human face? In 2016 the team shipped its first interactive digital human, tied to Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Today the company is headquartered at 10900 Research Blvd in Austin, Texas, though its engineering roots remain distinctly Kiwi. It rebranded from FaceMe to UneeQ as the digital-human category took shape, and it has spent more than fifteen years on a single wager - that conversational AI would eventually want a body - long before the generative-AI boom made that wager fashionable.
The timing now works in its favor. As enterprises scramble to deploy LLMs, the differentiator is no longer whether the model can answer, but whether the interaction feels like something a customer wants to repeat. UneeQ's argument is that embodiment - a face, a voice, eye contact - is what turns a transaction into a connection.
Realistic conversations that build real human connection.
The problem UneeQ targets is engagement, not intelligence. A text chatbot can be accurate and still feel like a dead end - impersonal, easy to abandon, hard to trust with anything sensitive. Two risks compound it: customers bounce, and unconstrained AI can wander into wrong or off-brand answers.
UneeQ's response is a platform that separates the brain from the body. Synapse, its orchestration layer, connects large language models, speech, company data and trusted sources - teaching a digital human a specific job in hours while grounding answers to reduce hallucinations and keep the brand safe. Synanim, its synthetic-animation engine, drives the face and body in real time, down to breathing rate and micro-expressions.
The measurable payoff shows up in deployments. After adding UneeQ digital avatars to help customers diagnose home-internet issues, Deutsche Telekom reported doubling its online conversion rates, with subsequent growth cited as high as 5.8x. The City of Amarillo's digital assistant, Emma, reported a 98% citizen-satisfaction score. UneeQ's own website concierge, Sophie, fields roughly 2,000 conversations a week in dozens of languages.
The through-line: a face changes behavior. People stay longer, ask more, and trust more when the AI on the other side looks back at them.
Create, deploy and manage branded digital humans across web, kiosk, app and events - with APIs plus cloud or on-premise deployment.
Real-time synthetic-animation engine for lifelike expression, lip-sync, breathing and body language. Integrates NVIDIA ACE and Audio2Face.
Orchestrates LLMs, speech, company data and trusted sources - teaching digital humans jobs fast while curbing hallucinations.
AI roleplay for practicing high-stakes sales, service and leadership conversations - no VR headset required.
Creative-agency service designing premium branded digital human ambassadors and experiences.
SOC2 and GDPR compliant, with secure cloud or on-premise deployment for regulated industries.
UneeQ's customers are enterprises and governments that need to talk to a lot of people at once without losing the human touch. UBS cloned the voice and knowledge of its Swiss chief economist, Daniel Kalt, as "Digital Dani," so clients could discuss markets any hour of the day. Qatar Airways launched Sama, billed as the world's first AI cabin crew, to handle customer care around the clock.
Deutsche Telekom put digital avatars on internet-diagnostics journeys; Kiehl's deployed a skincare advisor named Eve; the City of Amarillo answers resident questions through Emma. The client roster also spans Pearson, Vodafone, PwC, Deloitte and NVIDIA - across banking, travel, telecom, retail, healthcare, education and the public sector.
Figures reported by UneeQ and its customers. Bar widths are illustrative, not to a single scale.
The category is crowded and getting louder. Avatar and synthetic-video players like Soul Machines, Synthesia, D-ID, HeyGen and Tavus all promise a human face for AI, and every generic LLM chatbot is a competitor for the same enterprise budget. UneeQ's positioning leans on two things: time and orchestration.
The time is the fifteen-plus years of animation and behavioral R&D baked into Synanim - the difference between an avatar that reads a script and one that appears to think while it speaks. The orchestration is Synapse, which treats brand safety and grounding as first-class features rather than afterthoughts, aimed squarely at regulated buyers in finance, telecom and government.
Its 2024 partnership with NVIDIA reinforced that stance: UneeQ integrated NVIDIA ACE and the Audio2Face microservice into Synanim for low-latency, believable lip-sync at scale. Rather than compete on model size, UneeQ competes on the last mile - making an AI conversation feel like a human one.
In market terms, UneeQ is a specialist in an emerging enterprise segment: conversational, embodied AI for customer experience and workforce training. It isn't trying to be the model; it's trying to be the interface everyone else's models wear.
Danny Tomsett founded the company and still leads it as CEO. His track record predates UneeQ: by his own account he built video games at age eight and founded - then exited - a telecommunications company at 25. He brought that operator's instinct to the digital-human bet.
The results earned early recognition. UneeQ won Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Business Challenge, and in 2018 landed on New Zealand's Deloitte Fast 50 with 317% revenue growth, while Tomsett was named an EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist. The company's expertise sits at an unusual intersection - AI and language on one side, real-time character animation and behavioral design on the other - which is exactly the seam most chatbot vendors never cross.
UneeQ digital humans put a human face on AI so people can connect, not just transact.
Danny Tomsett launches the company in New Zealand, focused on live video chat for customer service.
The team moves away from live video toward AI-driven digital humans.
Ships its first interactive digital human, tied to Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Raises a $10M Series A led by Alium Capital and is named to the Deloitte Fast 50 NZ with 317% growth.
FaceMe becomes UneeQ, reflecting its focus on digital-human technology.
Integrates NVIDIA ACE and Audio2Face into Synanim for greater realism.
Announces record growth as digital humans expand across enterprise CX and training markets.
UneeQ builds AI-powered digital humans - real-time animated avatars that give chatbots and enterprise AI a human face, voice and body language for customer experience, brand engagement and employee training.
Danny Tomsett founded the company in New Zealand in 2009 as FaceMe; it rebranded to UneeQ around 2019 and is now headquartered in Austin, Texas.
Its digital human platform is built on Synanim (a synthetic-animation engine) and Synapse (an AI orchestration brain), alongside an Immersive Training Platform and UneeQ Studio creative services.
Enterprises and governments in banking, airlines, telecom, retail, healthcare and the public sector - including UBS, Qatar Airways, Deutsche Telekom and the City of Amarillo.
UneeQ raised a $10M Series A in November 2018 led by Alium Capital, at roughly a $74M post-money valuation.