EdTech startup HFactory emerges from Hi! PARIS AI Center

EdTech SaaS company HFactory comes out of stealth mode today with the ambition to reignite higher education pedagogy on Data Science and AI. The startup takes its roots in the “learning by doing” methods and pedagogical approaches championed within the Hi! PARIS Center for AI (HEC Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris and Inria) and the HEC Paris Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center.

The company founders realized that while there is a consensus to say that Data Science and AI pedagogy should be grounded in “real-life” group projects and hands-on assignments, it actually remains very impractical for educators to organize such activities. Professors end up cobbling a variety of disconnected tools, with little support and no way of integrating them into a delightful learner experience. HFactory ambitions to solve that gap, and to empower educators to create engaging active learning experiences in Data Science and AI.

Such ambition will materialize first with the release of a packaged service for organizing data challenges and hackathons, and second with the delivery of the world’s first learning content management system (LCMS) dedicated to data science and AI education. Both products, which integrate a built-in Data Science Environment, are already being actively used by the Hi! PARIS Center and will be generally available in the first semester of 2022.

"Building a great product requires close interaction and early feedback from pilot users and customers, and we have been blessed by the sustained support received from the Hi! PARIS Center,” says Ghislain Mazars, Founder & CEO at HFactory. “We are definitely looking for a continued partnership with the Center, its members and corporate donors, and to contribute to the international visibility of Hi! PARIS through our own corporate development."

“Hi! PARIS is built on a triptych of education, research and innovation, and HFactory is ideally positioned at the convergence of those three dimensions,” notes Gael Richard, Executive Director of the Hi! PARIS Center. “It is especially fulfilling for us, within 18 months of the creation of the Center, to see such a startup developing in our ecosystem.”

“We are very proud to see our nurturing of HFactory come to full blossom within the Hi! PARIS ecosystem,” confirms Inge Kerkloh Devif, Senior Executive Director of the HEC Paris Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center. “The Covid pandemic has underlined the need for new, innovative learning approaches and tools, and we are especially supportive of startups that can make an impact in that field.”

About HFactory

HFactory helps educators create engaging active learning experiences in Data Science & AI. With its SaaS application to run data innovation challenges, machine learning courses and AI research projects, the company is the natural partner of higher education institutions and enterprise customers willing to step up their Data & AI training and pedagogy.