Paris-based AI startup H, previously known as Holistic, has raised a $220m seed round to build foundational models — AI models trained on large amounts of data, similar to those developed by OpenAI in the US, Mistral in France and Aleph Alpha in Germany.
H was founded earlier this year in the French capital by a team that includes Karl Tuyls, Laurent Sifre, Julien Perolat and Daan Wierstra, who are all former scientists from Google DeepMind; CEO Charles Kantor is a former Stanford University computational mathematics student.
The capital will be used to expand the startup’s research team and to fund the “vast amounts” of compute and data power that are necessary to build foundational models, according to the company.
The company did not disclose how much of the investment is equity and how much is debt. According to previous reports, the round is made up of up to $120m in convertible bonds — a form of debt financing that can be converted into equity after specific conditions have been met.
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