Artificial intelligence firm H2O.ai raises $72.5 mn in funding round led by Goldman Sachs, Ping An

New Delhi: H2O.ai, an artificial intelligence (AI) firm, on Tuesday said it has secured $72.5 million (about Rs 519.7 crore) in a funding round led by Goldman Sachs and Ping An Global Voyager Fund. The series D round also saw continued investment from Wells Fargo, NVIDIA and Nexus Venture Partners, a statement said. With the latest infusion, the total funding raised by the company is about $147 million. [caption id=“attachment_2334664” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AP[/caption] Jade Mandel from Goldman Sachs will be joining the H2O.ai board of directors, it said. With this new round of investment, the company plans to accelerate innovation and expand sales and marketing globally, the statement said. “The new investment will be used to further simplify AI for business users with new and ground-breaking technologies,” it added. H2O.ai will also continue to innovate to support AI4Good with a focus on wildlife and water conservation, and investments in its academic program that makes the H2O.ai portfolio freely available to students, researchers and universities, the statement said. Currently, the company has a small presence in India with about half a dozen people and an AI Centre of Excellence in Chennai. The company plans to expand this to a team of 40 people in the next 12 months. H2O Driverless AI, the company’s automatic machine learning platform, has helped tripled H2O.ai’s customer base. Its customers include names like Booking.com, Capital One, Comcast, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Franklin Templeton, Hitachi, MarketAxess, Nationwide Insurance, PwC, Tokio Marine, Wells Fargo and Walgreens. “H2O.ai is democratizing AI and powering the imagination of every entrepreneur and business globally - we are making them the true AI superpowers,” H2O.ai founder and CEO Sri Ambati said. Founded in 2012, H2O.ai’s investor base includes names like Barclays, Capital One, Crane Ventures, CreditEase, New York Life, Paxion Ventures, SST Holdings, TransAmerica and Walden River Wood.