H Company
France
French AI lab building frontier models with a focus on agentic AI that can reason and act over long tasks.
European Alternative to:
A French AI startup that came out of stealth in 2024 with a very large seed round and a focus on agentic models, software that can actually take actions on your behalf rather than just answer questions. Founded in Paris by ex-Google DeepMind researchers (the founding team famously fractured shortly after launch, with Karl Tuyls and others departing), H is now led by Charles Kantor.
What it's building
- Runner H, an agent product aimed at automating multi-step workflows on the web
- Action-oriented foundation models trained for tool use and browser control
- An enterprise offering for companies that want to deploy agents on internal systems
Why it shows up here
Independent European agent labs are rare. H is one of the few based in the EU pursuing this part of the stack, with significant French backing and an explicit pitch around sovereignty for the agent layer rather than just the model layer.
Honestly
H is early. The product is evolving, the team has been through public turbulence, and the agent market itself is unsettled. Worth watching more than betting your roadmap on, unless you're the kind of buyer who likes to be on the front edge.
Germany