It’s uncommon to hear about seed rounds surpassing $10 million, yet H, a Paris-based startup formerly known as Holistic AI, has unveiled a staggering $220 million seed round shortly after its inception.
This rapid and substantial funding can be attributed to its focus on AI and its notable founding team. Charles Kantor, co-founder and CEO, was a researcher at Stanford University.
The other four co-founders come from DeepMind, Google’s AI subsidiary. Karl Tuyls, former research director at DeepMind, specialized in game theory and multi-agent systems. Laurent Sifre, a principal scientist, contributed to major projects like AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and AlphaStar, and also worked on Google’s Gemini and Gemma AI models. Daan Wierstra, set to be H’s Chief Scientist, was part of DeepMind’s founding team. Julien Perolat also focused on game theory and multi-agent research at DeepMind.
H’s mission involves developing AI agents—automated systems performing tasks traditionally handled by humans. The company’s minimalist website highlights its effort in creating “frontier action models to enhance worker productivity.”
The startup’s investors include a mix of billionaires, notable venture capital funds, and strategic partners. Among the billionaire investors are Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, Yuri Milner, Bernard Arnault (via Aglaé Ventures), and Motier Ventures from the family owning the Galeries Lafayette Group.
Venture capital involvement features Accel, Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund, Creandum, Elaia Partners, Eurazeo, FirstMark Capital, and Visionaries Club. The industrial investor list is headlined by Amazon and Samsung, with UiPath also joining to aid in commercialization and partnerships.
Per an earlier Bloomberg report, the funding commitments are divided between equity and convertible debt. Approximately 40% of the seed financing is traditional equity, meaning H has exchanged shares for this investment. The rest will convert to equity in future funding rounds, with investor stakes determined by the company’s subsequent valuation.
H has quickly assembled a team of 25 engineers and scientists, signifying its aggressive growth strategy. In comparison, another well-funded AI startup, Mistral AI, has taken a more cautious approach to hiring.
Significant funding is necessary for compute power and data sets. The company aims to achieve full Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—AI capable of performing a wide variety of tasks at human-level intelligence. However, achieving AGI remains speculative and is often viewed as a marketing assertion.
As reported last year, Paris has become an AI startup and talent hub. Mistral AI stands out as a prominent name, but numerous tech entrepreneurs have gravitated towards artificial intelligence, setting up their ventures in the French capital.
In addition to funding access, tech giants like Facebook and Google have established AI research labs in Paris and London. While leading AI startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic are based in San Francisco, burgeoning AI ecosystems are also emerging in Paris and London.
