20 Things You Didn’t Know about H20.ai
Artificial intelligence is no longer something that is only featured in science fiction movies. As a matter of fact, it is very much becoming something that people work with on a daily basis, across all walks of life. There is even one company, H2O.ai, which is dedicated to making it easier for any enterprise, regardless of the type of business in question, to build and develop targeted AI technology that helps them operate in a more streamlined manner. There are a lot of companies that have decided to take advantage of the services offered by H2O.ai, not the least of which include companies dedicated to providing health care to hundreds of thousands of people. If you want to know more about the types of precedents that this company is setting, go ahead and check out the list below. It will help you learn 20 more things about the company that you might find interesting. At the very least, you’re likely to gain a better understanding of just how integrated artificial intelligence technology has become into our society, often without us even slightly realizing it.
1. They started as an open-source network
Like a lot of tech startups, the company started out as an open source network. For them, the goal was to gauge customer interest as much as anything else. In addition, beginning business as an open source network gave them an opportunity to put their feelers out and see what types of interest they might be able to generate within the community. At the time they did it, it was something that was much more rare than it is today. As such, it would be more than fair to say that there was a certain amount of risk involved.
2. It’s not only tech companies that are clamoring to work with them
It’s easy to have the misconception that the only companies working with them are tech companies, as that is where you would normally expect to find most AI technology. However, that really couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, they have companies that encompass virtually all types of businesses working with them. Many of these companies will be discussed in greater detail in the following paragraphs. For now, you need to know that companies involved in everything from healthcare to finance to foodservice, routinely work with them for one reason or another.
3. They just raised $100 million
They’ve definitely been making a lot of headway lately, not only with a research and development department, but also with their marketing campaigns. As such, they just raised another $100 million. That may not sound like a lot when you’re talking about capital raised by a tech startup, but it’s definitely enough to help them further the goals that they already have. It also adds to the money that they made in previous rounds, which is rather significant in and of itself.
4. They are currently valued at $1.7 billion
Currently, the company is valued at a staggering $1.7 billion dollars. That’s after five rounds of fundraising and it’s enough to help them achieve many of the goals that they have set to achieve within the coming months and years.
5. Their latest round of funding was backed by one of their own customers
To be more specific, the latest round of funding was backed by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. This particular bank has been a customer of theirs for some time. Being extremely satisfied with the work that they have done, they decided that they wanted to kick things up a notch and back another round of funding for them. There were many companies involved, but it was the Commonwealth Bank of Australia that did the lion’s share of the work this time around.
6. The hope is that the two companies will be able to create a partnership
The Commonwealth Bank has openly said that they wanted to create another round of fundraising in hopes of eventually developing a long-term partnership as opposed to merely being a customer. That alone goes to show how valuable the services provided by this company really are. Their customers trust them to not only do what they say they will do, but also to go above and beyond. Clearly, they have excelled the expectations of many of their customers, as evidenced by the fact that their own customers are willing to financially back them so they can grow and expand.
7. The company plans to research additional AI technology with the money
The company says that they plan to research additional AI technology with this latest round of funding so that they can continue to provide more applications to their customers. As far as they are concerned, it’s a way of giving back to the customers who have already put so much faith in them.
8. They also want to hire more personnel
They also plan to hire more personnel so that they have enough staff to not only handle additional research and development, but also the additional customers that will naturally come along as part of the expansion process. More specifically, they’re interested in hiring personnel who are very familiar with AI technology and can help develop new applications for the technology while still maintaining the type of customer service that they have already become known for.
9. Their previous round of funding was also backed by one of their customers
It’s interesting to note that their previous round of funding was also backed by one of their own customers, Goldman Sachs. It’s extremely rare that a company is able to get one of their own customers to back even one round of funding, much less two. It serves as a testament to the types of things that the company is achieving.
10. Roughly 40% of their customers are in the financial sector
It shouldn’t really come as any surprise that about 40% of their customers are in some type of finance related business, mostly large banks. Since AI technology fits very well into this type of setting, it only stands to reason that some of the largest banks in the world would take advantage of it in order to both allow operations to become more streamlined and ensure that they’re keeping their own clients as safe as possible.
11. Some of the companies you likely use everyday are also customers
The thing that surprises most people is that a lot of companies that you personally use on a daily basis also utilize AI technology created by this company. When you make a call to your bank’s call center or you’re trying to contact one of your credit card providers, you may not know that part of those services offered on the automated system are indeed created by AI technology, but that is the case. As such, most people interact with this type of system at least every few days. It’s just not always so obvious that everyone would know that this type of technology is used far more often than they think it is.
12. They also have customers in the food service industry
They even have customers in the foodservice industry, with Chipotle being one of their biggest customers of this type. They have applications that help them keep track of things like payroll, expenditures and revenue as it relates to each individual location in their chain. It also helps them streamline the ordering process so that you can experience the highest level of convenience whenever you interact with them.
13. Many customers who use their services deal with logistics
It really isn’t much of a surprise that a lot of their customers deal with getting things from one place to another within a predetermined amount of time. Again, this is an almost perfect environment for AI technology. As such, customers like UPS routinely use their applications in order to help ensure that packages get where they’re going on time. It also helps them decide how many trucks they should staff for a given area at any particular point in time.
14. Even major communication companies are getting in on the trend
Communication companies such as AT&T also utilize their services. With a company as big as AT&T, it would be almost impossible to monitor everything they have going on manually. The AI technology that is created by the company in question here helps them keep everything running smoothly and also helps to cut down on wait times when customers call in with a question.
15. They can help reduce the amount of fraud experienced by big banks
One of the major ways that they help larger financial institutions is by cutting down on the amount of fraud that is typically experienced by these types of banks. This can help save the banks money and that in turn saves you money. As banks are forced to pass the cost of dealing with fraud protection on to their customers, it only makes sense to utilize AI technology that can effectively cut down on that type of thing without costing a fortune.
16. They also help develop technology for the healthcare industry that keeps patients safe
The company also utilizes much of their technology surrounding AI applications for the healthcare industry. The goal is to help keep patients safer and protect their personal information at the same time. As a matter of fact, they work hand-in-hand to ensure the efficient operation of a modern-day health care system, as it allows pertinent patient information to be shared across the board for those individuals who need to know that information as quickly as possible. At the same time, it keeps that same information out of the hands of individuals who never should have known it in the first place.
17. Their goal is to streamline business operations, thereby saving customers money
By utilizing AI technology that they have developed into simple applications, they are able to streamline their business operations for other customers, thereby saving many of their customers a significant amount of money. You already know that they can save their customers in the financial institution money, but it doesn’t end there. As a matter of fact, all of their customers, from those in the healthcare industry to the ones in food service, can benefit from this type of AI technology.
18. They hope they can create what amounts to an app store for their applications
Eventually, they hope to create something similar to Apple’s App Store, where customers can go in and download the specific AI technology applications that they need for their own businesses. They’re not quite there yet, but they are getting closer. Once it is complete, it will make the process much easier for their customers to decide which applications they need and then download them as quickly as possible.
19. They’ve become more popular since the pandemic hit
While many businesses were struggling to keep their head above water during the pandemic, this particular company saw their business expand by leaps and bounds. It’s largely because other companies started to realize that in order to remain in business, they were going to have to be able to do business in a much more technologically advanced way than they had in the past. The use of AI technology is a perfect way to keep something operating during a pandemic when people aren’t supposed to be in close contact with one another.
20. They currently have no less than 45 separate applications for use
At the moment, they have 45 different applications available for businesses to use. They’re also more than happy to help walk their customers through the entire process so that it’s easier to find out which types of applications would work best in a given situation. As previously mentioned, they intend to further enhance those applications in the future while simultaneously creating more applications that can eventually be downloaded in a matter of minutes.
