AppDirect Inc. has acquired Soul Machines Ltd., the company announced on September 28, 2026, in a move that adds human-like artificial intelligence avatars to its cloud-based business commerce platform and marketplace. AppDirect said the deal expands its ability to deploy interactive experiences for sales, advisers, support and services. The acquisition is aimed at organizations that are moving past AI experimentation and looking for ways to have the technology interface directly with users.
AppDirect operates a commerce service that lets administrators offer company-approved services to users through a custom catalog that works like an App Store on the front end while adding management features such as centralized billing on the back end. The company describes itself as an everything store for business technology, covering cloud applications, infrastructure, telecom and security tools. It automates recurring billing, invoicing, user provisioning and mobile management, simplifying how business customers discover, buy, sell and manage software and cloud services.
Soul Machines provides human-like digital avatars that the company says can see, listen, react and remember interactions, and that appear to empathize more like a real person, which it says generates greater trust and engagement. By recreating a human-like appearance, with behavior and a lifelike voice close to a person, the platform can automate face-to-face tasks for critical business functions including customer support and self-service, learning and development, training, employee help desks and digital commerce assistance.
AppDirect Chairman and Chief Executive Nicolas Desmarais said Soul Machines helps the company take the next step in making AI more useful and more accessible for businesses. He said companies are no longer asking whether they should adopt AI but how to put it to work in ways that improve customer engagement, support employees and drive real business outcomes. The acquisition is intended to give apps on AppDirect's platform a digital human face for customers and employees.
AppDirect said the deal will help its customers move beyond text-based AI interfaces toward more engaging experiences by adding human-based avatars to applications. Soul Machines' AI avatars will also soon be available in apps built in Devs.ai, an enterprise vibe-coding platform powered by AppDirect that lets developers build apps and agents. The acquisition reflects a broader push by vendors to differentiate their platforms as AI adoption widens across US businesses.
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