Paris-based “H”, a global foundation model and agentic AI company, on Tuesday, May 21, announced its launch along with $220M (approximately €204M) funding in a seed round.
The funding round was backed by global companies, including Accel, UiPath Inc., Bpifrance, through its Large Venture fund, Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, Amazon, FirstMark, Elaia Partners, Eurazeo, and Yuri Milner.
Other participants in the round include Bernard Arnault’s Aglaé Ventures, Creandum, Motier Ventures, Samsung, and Visionaries Club, among others.
Fund utilisation
In addition to their investment, UiPath and other strategic partners are collaborating with “H” on commercial, market access, and computing partnerships.
“I believe there is a tremendous opportunity with H, a company founded by some of the world’s top AI experts who uniquely understand the capabilities required to deliver impactful and evolutionary AI solutions,” says Daniel Dines, Executive Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer at UiPath, Inc.
“The H team will bring the power of GenAI to businesses and business automation via a new generation of action models, capable of completing a succession of tasks to automate complex workflows. I believe this foundational layer will be transformative and give new execution capabilities to software across industries and functions, with the ultimate goal to reach artificial general intelligence for business automation,” Dines.
The investment will be used to further develop the company’s research talent.
Additionally, the capital will be used to acquire the significant computational and data resources necessary to achieve breakthroughs in the field of agentic models, supporting the company’s vision of attaining full Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
H: Introducing the power of genAI to businesses
“H” was founded in late 2023, with the founding team consisting of Stanford University researcher Charles Kantor as CEO, as well as four highly experienced DeepMind alumni: Karl Tuyls (Chief Research and Operations Officer), Laurent Sifre (Chief Technological Officer), Daan Wierstra (joining soon as Chief Scientist), and Julien Perolat (Chief Multi-Agent Officer).
“I’m incredibly fortunate to be on this journey alongside such talented co-founders, supportive investors, and our industry partners,” says Charles Kantor, CEO at H.
“The H Company is building AI that is not only at the frontier but also H-olistic and H-umane. The team unites around a simple yet ambitious mission: to drive the productivity of billions forward. We’re committed to transforming entire industries as well as the everyday human experience, bringing that human-computer tandem into reality and paving the way towards full-AGI,” adds Kantor.
The company aims to introduce genAI to businesses worldwide through multimodal-to-action models with capabilities across business and consumer verticals. The company will build and deploy foundational action models with reasoning, planning, and collaboration capabilities.
“The H team’s vision of creating a large action model to automate business tasks can be transformational across all industries,” says Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel. “What H is building goes beyond the capabilities of LLMs and we’re thrilled to be backing such an exceptional founding team on their journey. We look forward to supporting the H team.”
“Bpifrance is delighted to support a top-tier scientific team trained in the best French institutions, bringing along highly qualified profiles. By launching in Paris, H confirms France’s leadership in the field of Generative AI. We are thrilled to participate in these exciting advancements through our investment and look forward to assisting these ambitious entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey with the full extent of Bpifrance’s resources,” adds Nicolas Dufourcq, CEO of Bpifrance.
01
Meet the 10 promising startups selected for Glovo Startup Lab