Company:H
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| Industry | Artificial intelligence |
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| Founded | 2023 |
| Founders |
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| Headquarters | Paris , France |
Number of employees | 80 (2025) |
| Website | hcompany |
| Artificial intelligence |
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| Major goals |
| Approaches |
| Philosophy |
| History |
| Technology |
| Glossary |
H Company, also known simply as H, is a French artificial intelligence startup which develops "action-oriented" artificial intelligence agents for enterprise automation and productivity. In May 2024, H Company closed a record-setting $220 million seed round, at the time the largest AI raise in Europe.[1][2]
History
H Company was created in 2023 by French entrepreneur Charles Kantor (born November 26, 1998) and four DeepMind veterans as founding researchers: Laurent Sifre (participated in the AlphaGo research program), Daan Wiestra (founding member of Google DeepMind), Karl Tuyls (specialized in multi-agent systems), and Julien Perollat (specialized in multi-agent systems and game theory).[1]
In May 2024, the firm secured what was then the largest European AI seed round, totaling $220 million led by US investors including Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), Amazon, and backed by Accel, Bpifrance, UiPath, Eurazeo, Xavier Niel, Yuri Milner, Bernard Arnault, Samsung and others. President Emmanuel Macron publicly congratulated the achievement on social media.[2][3]
By August 2024 three founding researchers—Wiestra, Tuyls and Perollat—had to depart over operational disagreements.[4] In November 2024 H launched Runner H, its first agentic-API platform.[5][6] In June 2025 the company unveiled three new agentic models.[7][8] Later that month, founder-CEO Charles Kantor stepped down,[9] succeeded by Gautier Cloix. aiming to pivot H Company toward an "agentic services" model.[citation needed] In July 2025, H Company introduced Surfer-H-CLI, an open-source, web-native Chrome agent designed for browser-based automation—able to search, scroll, click, and type on behalf of users and controllable via any visual language model (VLM). When paired with its June 2025 open-sourced 3B-parameter Holo-1 model, Surfer-H-CLI achieved 92.2% WebVoyager benchmark accuracy.[10]
Products
- Runner H - API for complex task automation and decision-making
- Surfer H and Tester H - companion agent frameworks (June 2025)[11]
Activity
H Company is building the next generation of enterprise software powered by AI agents that observe, decide, and act. H products are autonomous by design, turning high-level goals into real execution across complex workflows. H Company aims to develop AI agents and "action-oriented" AI models to automate complex tasks and enhance productivity in various sectors.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Dillet, Romain (21 May 2024). "French AI startup H raises $220 million seed round". https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/21/french-ai-startup-h-raises-220-million-seed-round/.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Deutscher, Maria (21 May 2024). "H, a new Paris-based AI startup, raises $220 M from prominent investors". https://siliconangle.com/2024/05/21/h-new-paris-based-ai-startup-raises-220m-prominent-investors/.
- ↑ "Emmanuel Macron congratulates H Company's record funding round". 21 May 2024. https://x.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1792942503231930370.
- ↑ "H, start-up française d'IA, voit trois de ses fondateurs partir après une levée de fonds record" (in fr). 27 Aug 2024. https://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/h-start-up-francaise-d-ia-voit-3-de-ses-fondateurs-partir-apres-une-levée-de-fonds-record.N2217436.
- ↑ Lunden, Ingrid (20 Nov 2024). "H, the AI startup that raised $220 M, launches Runner H for "agentic" applications". https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/20/h-the-ai-startup-that-raised-220m-launches-its-first-product-runner-h-for-agentic-applications/.
- ↑ "H: why this French startup is creating a buzz in autonomous AI". 25 November 2024. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/h-why-french-start-creating-090102812.html.
- ↑ "France's H Company releases 3 new agentic models it hopes will be the heart of all AI". 3 June 2025. https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/06/03/frances-h-company-releases-3-new-agentic-models-it-hopes-will-be-the-heart-of-all-ai.
- ↑ Polge, Benjamin (3 June 2025). "IA : le Français H entre directement dans la cour des grands" (in fr). https://www.journaldunet.com/intelligence-artificielle/1542063-ia-le-francais-h-entre-directement-dans-la-cour-des-grands/.
- ↑ Leprince-Ringuet, Daphné (4 July 2025). "Revealed: How H Company CEO went from raising $220m to stepping down just one year later". https://sifted.eu/articles/h-company-charles-kantor-profile.
- ↑ "H Company launches Surfer-H-CLI: an open-source Chrome agent for web automation". July 2025. https://www.hcompany.ai/surfer-h.
- ↑ "H Company launches next-generation autonomous AI agents for enterprise and consumer markets". 3 June 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250603660208/en/H-Company-Launches-Next-Generation-Autonomous-AI-Agents-for-Enterprise-and-Consumer-Markets.
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