H, the French artificial intelligence startup founded by veterans of Google’s DeepMind AI lab and backed by billionaires including LVMH Chief Executive Bernard Arnault, announced another round of funding after announcing its first product. Preparing for the round.
The Paris-based AI firm is operating with less money than its rivals and will need to find more capital, according to CEO Charles Kanter, who co-founded the startup with DeepMind alum Laurent Seferi. . The company plans to release more products before the end of the year and the next financing round could come “in the next few months,” he said in an interview.
H, founded earlier this year to create “AI agents” that can automatically perform a number of tasks on behalf of the user, said in a blog post on Tuesday that its first such agent is now available for testing. is
The company posted a video of “Runner H,” an AI model created by Apple Inc. browses through its website to find a slogan for its latest watch series. H also posted evaluation data stating that the product outperformed other agents.
H’s seed round was a sign of investor appetite for all things AI, attracting $220 million, an unusually large amount of initial funding for a company that has yet to raise any funding. The product was not released. Investors in this round include Accel Partners LP, Amazon.com Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. And billionaires like Arnault with his venture capital fund and former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt were involved.
H is operating in a highly competitive space, with AI heavyweights including Microsoft Corp. And Anthropic is also developing autonomous agent tools.
Its first year was marred by the departure of co-founders Carl Tuels, Dan Verstra and Julien Perrault over what H called “operational differences”. All three previously worked at DeepMind.
“It’s the past,” Kanter said of the departures, pointing to a growing team of 50 engineers and sales employees in Paris and London.
Kantor said he envisions H’s products being used by companies that want to automate tasks like website testing and job searches.
