H2O.ai Embarks on Global Expansion to Drive AI Democratization

Company Expands into Key Markets in EMEA and APAC, Strengthens Leadership Team with New Global Sales Leader

H2O.ai, the open source leader in AI, today announced that it is expanding operations into several key regions and cities around the world, including London, Prague, Australia, Braziland China to further support the growing data science community in these regions and demonstrate H2O.ai’s commitment to democratizing AI for everyone across the globe. Additionally, the company announced the appointment of David Armstrong as its new SVP Global Sales to support this global expansion by continuing to strengthen H2O.ai’s enterprise go-to-market strategy and accelerate company growth.

To meet growing global demand for AI, H2O.ai has opened a European AI Research Center of Excellence in Prague with a team dedicated to driving high velocity in product innovation as the company continues to scale rapidly. The development and research efforts in Prague will also support company expansion in EMEA, where the team continues to build relationships with some of the region’s largest financial and banking organizations, including building a presence in London.

“AI is changing the way we work at Barclays, from how we manage our risk to, most importantly, how we meet our clients’ ever-changing financial needs,” said John Stecher, Chief Innovation Officer at Barclays. “We look to ensure that we’re leveraging the best of breed AI platforms like H2O.ai, hardware and techniques, focusing on melding them together with our deep industry expertise, to deliver innovative financial solutions that move our clients and us forward.”

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In addition to opening up offices in London and Prague, H2O.ai is expanding its presence into China. In November 2017, the company announced its $40 million Series C funding round with participation from leading financial services firms, including Barclays and Beijing-based Fintech conglomerate, CreditEase, which is committed to helping the company establish a strong presence in China.

“H2O.ai is at the forefront of cutting-edge innovation in the AI space. They have built user-friendly tools that enable using AI for practical applications in a scalable way across large organizations. They already have several financial services clients such as Capital One and PayPal,” said Anju Patwardhan, Managing Director at CreditEase Fintech Investment Fund. “We believe in H2O.ai’s mission to democratize AI and expect it to grow rapidly beyond the North American and European markets to China and the rest of Asia.”

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In both EMEA and APAC specifically, H2O.ai is committed to connecting the region’s large population of data science, machine learning and AI professionals. To accomplish this, the company has hosted a number of successful meetups in the regions, with over 15,000 participants joining in EMEA, including nearly 6,000 in London alone.

“H2O is a global open source machine learning movement with world-wide usage and our community of customers need a global organization to serve their AI needs,” said Sri Ambati, CEO and founder at H2O.ai. “We are excited to announce our expansion into London and our European AI Research Center of Excellence in Prague to bring our AI and maker culture to our partners in UK and EMEA. Barclays and CreditEase extend our networks in England and China with their global connectivity and reach.”

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