[Funding alert] H2O.ai closes $100M in Series E round led by Customer Commonwealth Bank of Australia

AI company H2O.ai on Monday said it had closed $100 million (about Rs 739.6 crore) in Series E funding led by Australia's largest bank, Customer Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA).

H2O.ai has now raised over $250 million and is valued at $1.7 billion, according to a statement.

Pivot Investment Partners joined prior investors, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and Crane Venture Partners, it said, adding that existing investors included customers and partners such as Wells Fargo, New York Life, and NVIDIA.

The capital will be used to scale partnerships, sales, marketing, and find customer success globally, the statement said.

"H2O.ai is picking winners in every vertical on every continent and making them AI superpowers to take on the tech giants with the H2O AI Cloud. Our innovative maker culture and customer obsession have won the trust and love of our customers and they have led every growth funding round at H2O.ai," H2O.ai founder and CEO Sri Ambati said.

This strategic partnership between the leading global AI Cloud movement and Australia's largest bank will unleash the juggernaut of co-innovation and further democratise AI with trust and freedom, Ambati added.

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"Commonwealth Bank processes and makes decisions based on millions of data points collected every day. AI already has helped us to improve our customer experience, however, we know there is untapped potential to do more," Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Matt Comyn said.

The investment in and strategic partnership with H2O.ai extends its leadership in artificial intelligence and ultimately boosts the bank's ability to offer leading digital propositions and reimagine products and services to customers, he added.

Launched in January 2021, the H2O AI Cloud brings all of H2O.ai's products together on a single, unified platform. Designed to support H2O.ai's core mission of democratising AI, the H2O AI Cloud simplifies making responsible AI that users can trust, operating it efficiently and innovating with pre-built AI applications.