French AI startup backed by Arnault plans to raise more funds

The Paris-based AI company is operating on less money than its competitors and will need to look for more capital, according to CEO Charles Cantor, who founded the startup with DeepMind alum Laurent Sifre. The company plans to launch more products before the end of the year, and the next funding round could come “in the next few months,” he said in an interview.

H, which was formed earlier this year to build “AI agents” that can automatically perform a range of tasks on a user’s behalf. he said in a blog post on Tuesday Its first agent is now available for testing.

The company posted a video of “Runner H,” which is based on its AI model, automatically browsing Apple Inc.’s website. To find a logo for its latest watch series. H also published evaluation data that it said showed the product outperforming other factors.

H Seed round It was a symbol of investors’ appetite for all things AI, attracting $220 million, an unusually large seed round for a company that had yet to release a product. Investors in that round included Accel Partners LP, Amazon.com Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. And billionaires like Arnault through his venture capital fund and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

H operates in a highly competitive space, where AI heavyweights including Microsoft Corp. Anthropic is also developing standalone proxy tools.

Her first year was marred departure From co-founders Karl Toels, Dan Vierstra and Julien Perrault on what H called “operational differences.” All three had previously worked at DeepMind.

“This is the past,” Cantor said of the departures, pointing to a growing team of 50 engineers and sales staff in Paris and London.

Cantor said he envisions the H product being used by companies looking to automate tasks such as testing websites and searching for new employees.