Thank you for the overwhelming reception to our series E funding news — Commonwealth Bank, largest Australian bank and our customer led our series E round of $100M at $1.7B valuation. Thousands of you from the community, customers, makers, investors, current and future shareholders reached out, shared in our joyous milestone and we were thrilled! We are humbled by the amount of ownership the world feels for H2O and how our brand evokes such love and optimism in the customer community —We walk with the knowledge and responsibility that we need to continue to make H2O, the iconic movement scale new heights and build a great organization that will democratize AI and make the world a better place. Fundraising for me at H2O is a 2-year journey of revitalization, penance and celebration and the growth in value is a reflection of value created from each round and how exponential spirals work.
It is easy to be heroic with the incredible team behind me. Startups are team sports and one like H2O, a movement that is a word-of-mouth community — unequivocally, it is you, yes YOU, our community, customers and makers that deserve the fullest credit for believing in us. Never underestimate the power of a small group of individuals bonded in purpose and making a movement.
Gratitude
Gratitude to the community, customers, our earlier investors, believers and the makers, now and past, and the maker culture at H2O.ai — your purpose, innovation, customer obsession and empathy in a world in need of intelligence is being celebrated! Congratulations. We are still only just getting started. It is still day zero. There is so much ahead. To make is to the love the world. makers gonna make!
Customer love is one of the greatest forces — customers have supported, led and participated in every major funding round of H2O.ai. Makers make value and serve communities; Communities embrace truth, Customers lead, investors, shareholders and communities make long term returns. For each tentative investor, we received a strong message of hope from the healthy trickle of users; We got to work and focused on the long term. Co-creation with customer opens up huge avenues for us to go to market. Customers want to become asset light and embrace monetization of data with AI. That is why we think the H2O AI movement is just getting started. We will pick winners in every category, every vertical of every continent and make them AI superpowers.
Rise of the data scientist.
As the first .ai domain and data science movement — we predicted the Rise of the data scientist a decade ago — that these quiet folks have changed the world by changing how we reason, experiment and form opinions. That one day they will be running strategy. Like the genius of the Grandmasters on our team. With our latest funding round, a formidable data scientist — Chief Data and Analytics Officer of Commonwealth Bank enters our boardroom. Welcome, Andrew! Nations already have AI task forces and AI Officers. This is only the glimpse of what’s ahead.
We are thrilled for the partnership under the leadership of Matt, Angus, Andrew, Dan, Chris, Ben, Daniel and so many more on the team at CBA. Your partnership means a lot — easily one of our toughest customers, you have boldly taken the AI world by storm! Our vision is not only to make CBA an AI superpower but make Australia an AI nation as we move to life after Covid and unleash the juggernaut of co-innovation. And take it to their customers. This will be fun!
Dinkar Jetley is an industry stalwart and joins our round from Pivot Investments. It will be a lot of fun working closely with Akbar and him in taking our message to the upper echelons in securities and finance in New York and London.
Make.
In the decade of pursuit of magic at H2O.ai one of the most strikingly surprising realization (& probably obvious) was that giving has always come back a million times. Innovation freedom is the greatest gift. To make is to love the world and make it better.
Open source gives that freedom to our community and our customers. It is also the most powerful instrument for makers to create a brand and community. Far more efficient than any other marketing. Our open source reached distant continents long before our feet. In every vertical on every continent, H2O.ai is being used by the winners in their domains! Every day across 20,000 organizations, open source H2O algorithms model and score hundreds of billions of transactions. And continues to garner ardent followers from millions of data scientists. With autoML we made it easier for the world to make AI with the ease, accuracy and speed of having several Grandmasters on staff. Explainability to help tell stories and move needle for the business and value. H2O AI Cloud and AI AppStore unleash productivity to make customers co-create and become makers. AI Feature Stores make insights reusable and share results of experiments across organizations. Pre-built AI Model Stores help tokenize AI across economies.
Teamwork makes the dream work. The incredible teamwork of makers at H2O across every sphere during lockdown and their continued support of my vision and mission is at once humbling. It is easy to be a hero with the commitment of world’s best team behind me.
We launched H2O.ai wildfire and bushfire challenge organized on our competition platform, H2O Olympics, is the first in a series building community efforts in AI to fight Climate change and unwind the greenwashing. Some of our work is helping predict hurricanes, map the undersea world and democratizing ocean science. H2O platforms are free for education, academic use, wildlife protection and finding pets. Our planet needs our time and needs it now. Time is the only non-renewable resource.
Covid, species at war.
Intelligence lights our path through darkness. Yellow flame in a sea of dark — urban colors of caution, highways and grit. The past couple of years world at war with another species Covid has shown how fragile life is. Equity, inclusion and trust have never been more important. Punctured by narrow walls and localized information and prosperity silos, our world has become polarized. Not only were supply chains, millions of lives were disrupted. Now more than ever is the need for us to come together in purpose. Our team got together during delta wave in India and did a small part. AI can help make that world possible after covid. H2O AI Health is going to democratize health and will work with the community health organizations, governments and nations. Covid has accelerated the event horizon for innovation. It where we learnt to strike partnerships across continents teaming up over zoom and make a stance!
Back on the road these past few weeks, I trek the urban streets of New York, DC (for a Whitehouse briefing on AI), Dallas, Atlanta meeting customers, (thank you, Georgia for keeping us purple ) — 18-wheelers of the dead in the war in Gramercy have made way to the bustle of life, joy and freedom gifted to us by my superheroine, Katalin Kariko: what a universal moment she and her team made for us! Urban parks transformed as monuments to Black Lives Matter in Alphabet City — Optimism is in the air. We still have a long way to go. We will need all our intelligence and human spirit to make the world ahead! Like H2O, life transcends.
In the midst of death, life persists.
In the midst of untruth, truth persists.
In the midst of darkness, light persists!
this will be fun, Sri
AFR https://www.afr.com/technology/cba-aims-to-be-ai-superpower-with-us100m-tech-plunge-20211105-p596bx
https://www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2021/11/CBA-partners-AI-leader.html
