At Vivatech, Bernard Arnault is the godfather of AI start-ups with the LVMH Innovation Prize

Fancy Tech is the big winner of the 2024 LVMH Innovation Awards. In front of a packed house at the Vivatech trade show on Thursday morning, Morgan Mao, the young boss of the Chinese platform which generates product presentation films using artificial intelligence, saw his flashy tree-shaped trophy (signed by the Dior teams and made in Murano, Italy) unveiled in a superb Louis Vuitton box.

But the real star of the morning was Bernard Arnault, celebrated like a rock star at Viva Technology. At the bustling Parisian new technology show, reactions are no doubt less subdued than at events in the world of luxury, and a standing ovation accompanied the arrival of the French tycoon on stage 1 at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre. The presence of the LVMH CEO was captured by hundreds of smartphones held in feverish hands. Before presenting the Innovation 2024 prize, the CEO of LVMH, dressed in an elegant anthracite suit over an unusual black turtleneck jumper, greeted the seven directors of the winning start-ups in the competition. And, in English, he extolled the links between his approach to luxury and the spirit of innovation.

“Why do we support innovation and start-ups?” he asked, after celebrating Maurice Levy, head of Publicis, seated alongside Antoine Arnault, with whom LVMH initiated Vivatech eight years ago. “We have 75 highly developed start-ups in the group that we call maisons. These are companies that all started out as family-run start-ups. With LVMH, we have always supported and invested in innovative companies. Some have done well, others less so. For example, we invested in the early days of Google, but also in Netflix at a time when it was a DVD rental business. There are reasons for success. The first is creativity and innovation. But that alone is not enough. For a luxury brand as for a start-up, the quality of your product is paramount. The third point is entrepreneurship and efficiency.

So the luxury giant turned to entrepreneurs. “We’ve seen some fantastic ideas fail to find their place. Execution is always key. When Facebook was born, there were many similar projects. But only one survived. It’s an ultra-competitive world. That’s also why we are partners of the Olympic Games. What interests us is the spirit of the athlete. To be an entrepreneur, you need to have the spirit of a top-level athlete. You have to have it every day and for a very long time. Believe me, for you this is just the beginning.”

At this year’s major event for innovation and technology, the luxury giant arrives on conquered ground. The LVMH group pavilion, set up in the heart of the main hall of the Porte de Versailles convention centre, is packed to the rafters. Long before the visit of the group’s CEO, the stands showcasing the innovations developed by the various houses highlighted the partner start-ups, which were given small spaces to present their solutions.

As a result, the six categories rewarded at the awards presented on Thursday actually highlighted some twenty companies with which the Group is deploying solutions for its customers or its teams. All the companies selected provide solutions that meet the strategic priorities defined by the Group,” explains Gonzague de Pirey, Director of Innovation and Data at LVMH. These solutions may concern the majority of LVMH companies, but we also work with companies that have the capacity to meet the needs of brands. So these are start-ups that are already mature and able to scale up their solutions.”

Seven winners with a strong AI focus

This is indeed the case of Fancy Tech, which also won the Immersive Digital Experiences prize, born in 2019 and already relying on more than 200 employees, with the ambition to grow rapidly. We developed our solution in China, but next month we’re opening an office in Paris with a team to be as close as possible to the headquarters of European brands,” Morgan Mao tells FashionNetwork.com. Our ambition is to become a global company. We are developing our 3D modelling solution coupled with the brands’ brief and film generation via artificial intelligence in order to get the most exact proportions of the products. GenAI extends the limits of imagination and creativity. But it can’t replace the heart and the human.”

While 1,545 companies had applied for this 2024 edition of the Innovation Awards, the majority of this year’s award-winning start-ups exploit artificial intelligence and data. In addition to Fancy Tech, six other companies received awards on May 23. Ircam Amplify, which creates sound worlds for brands, was awarded the Image & media for brand desirability prize. Aectual was awarded the Sustainability & Greentech prize for its architectural elements and furniture created using a large-format 3D printer and recycled materials. The Omnichannel & Retail prize went to Glanceable, which uses artificial intelligence to analyse customer feedback and make recommendations to improve customer satisfaction.

Authena, which focuses on product and resource authentication using AI resources and the intelligence of IoT objects, won the Operations Excellence prize. Heralbony, winner of the Employee Experience, Diversity & Inclusion prize, took an artistic break from the awards ceremony. Its mission is to create licences for companies to use the works of disabled artists. Finally, the jury awarded a special mention for Data, AI & Gen Ai solutions to the American company BLNG, which offers a virtual studio assisted by generative artificial intelligence for the jewellery industry.

Each of these players was identified as having worked with one or more of the Group’s Houses. With the spotlight now shining on them, they are all talking about the opportunity to work with other LVMH brands, but the event should also open the doors to other principals.