French AI Startup "H" Bags $220M in Seed Round

Paris-based AI startup “H” has successfully raised $220 million in seed funding. The company, originally known as Holistic AI, was rebranded to “H”. The founding team consists of former DeepMind employees who are working towards the development of advanced AI agents.

Founders and Funding

The team at H is led by Charles Kantor, a former university researcher at Stanford. Other founding members include Karl Tuyls, Laurent Sifre, Daan Wierstra, and Julien Perolat. All these individuals were once part of DeepMind, with specializations in fields such as game theory and multi-agent research.

The startup’s seed round attracted high-profile figures and firms, including Eric Schmidt, Amazon, and Samsung. Venture capital came from Accel, Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund, among others. The funds were raised through a combination of equity and convertible debt.

The Future of “H”

The funding aims to support H’s focus on developing AI agents intended to enhance worker productivity. The company plans to use these funds to develop AI models capable of carrying out tasks traditionally performed by humans.

Already armed with a team of 25 engineers and scientists, H is looking to develop AI capabilities across a range of business and consumer verticals. The ultimate goal is to create systems capable of artificial general intelligence - a level of AI that can perform any intellectual task a human can.