H2O.ai raises $100M at a $1.6B pre-money valuation for tools to make AI usable by any kind of enterprise – TechCrunch

Now, it has raised $100 million to fuel its growth, a round of funding that values H2O.ai at $1.7 billion post-money ($1.6 billion pre-money). This is a Series E round, and it's being led by a strategic backer, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), which has been a customer of the startup and will be using the backing to kick off a deeper partnership between the two to build new services. Others in the round include Goldman Sachs, Pivot Investment Partners, Crane Venture Partners and Celesta Capital. Further plans for the funding include building more products for H2O.ai as a whole, and hiring more talent to continue expanding the company's H2O AI Hybrid Cloud platform. This is not the first time that a customer has led a round as a strategic backer: in 2019, Goldman Sachs led the company's Series D of $72.5 million.