H Company, a French artificial intelligence (AI) startup looking to integrate generative AI into business processes, just lost three of its initial five co-founders to “operational differences.” All former Google DeepMind scientists, Karl Tuyls, Daan Wierstra, and Julien Perolat, made the announcement via a LinkedIn post on August 24th, which went on to state, “All are in agreement that this will enable the company’s greatest success moving forward.”
These three co-founders left the company just three months after successfully raising $220 million in seed capital with a single funding round before even releasing a product, with major players like Amazon being named among the investors. This initiative marked H as having raised one of the largest seed rounds to have ever taken place in France.
Who’s Left and Where Are Things Going?
Now, only CEO Charles A. Kantor, a former computational mathematics researcher at Stanford University, and CTO Laurent Sifre, another former Google DeepMind scientist, are left to guide the company’s team of almost 40 engineers and researchers.
The company plans to release a line of products by the end of 2024, with a focus on building foundational “agentic” models. This is a form of AI whose primary function is not to respond to individual prompts but rather to be assigned with tasks that the model breaks down into smaller sub-tasks to be completed as a multi-step process. This way, the AI is better able to provide reasoning behind a finished assignment, and it is becoming better at planning and collaborating with users than other models that are currently available.
AI Agents
These AI agents are automated systems that are meant to perform tasks that would have otherwise been performed by human workers, making the H company’s product of particular interest to large corporations looking to save on labor costs. H has suggested that it wants to achieve full Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), where a model is capable on a level comparable with human intelligence.
As the company stated in its post on Saturday, “When H Company launched earlier this year, the team set out to advance the power of GenAI to people and businesses globally via a new generation of action models. Today, H’s team of almost 40 engineers and researchers remain committed to this vision, developing cutting-edge action capabilities that enhance worker productivity and push the frontiers of AI research and engineering.”
Building a Quality Investment
With this focus, the model is built to better serve businesses and consumers alike, a fact that has sparked the interest of the numerous investors now involved in the project. H has acknowledged its investors’ continued support through the difficult decision for three of its co-founders to leave the project, suggesting that they are still confident in getting results and a quality product from the H company at the end of the year.
According to Business Insider, $120 million of the total investment was comprised of so-called convertible notes, a method in which the initial investment is structured as a debt investment but includes a provision for the accrued interest and principle to become equity at a previously determined future date. So long as this is an accurate account, the remaining $100 million of the investment could be further debt financing, equity financing, or a combination of the two.
Regardless, the success of the H company’s initial round of investment has made it a huge AI startup in France, ranking 19th among 69 active competitors in terms of accrued funding, according to Tracxn.
Continuing Efforts
Despite the loss of three co-founders, the H company is pushing forward with its research initiatives, backed by its incredible first round of funding. If its product succeeds in creating AI agents, its solution promises to enhance productivity and foster business success moving forward.
