Thread, the London-based fashion e-commerce company which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend clothes to customers, has raised £17m in funding in a round led by H&M.

The business uses a mixture of AI and human stylists to learn a customer’s fashion tastes. Human stylists at Thread typically make style decisions for customers, and then use AI to search through the items on the service.

The investment round was led by Swedish fashion retail company H&M, which is working with the start-up on ways to bring Thread’s software into the real-world through a retail partnership.

Previous investors in Thread include Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman, two of the cofounders of Google DeepMind, the British AI startup purchased by Google for £400m.

Thread chief executive Kieran O'Neill said that he sees a partnership between human stylists and AI as the future of fashion.

“I see the majority of the industry going online and then everything online becoming personalised,” he said. “We don't really believe that humans on their own or algorithms on their own is as good as the combination of the two. Our approach has been to take the best bits of each and combine them.”

Currently, the business only sells men’s fashion items in the UK, but Mr O'Neill said that he’s keen to expand internationally and into women’s fashion.