Paris — Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, opened the 10th edition of Viva Tech, calling itself the “fashion week of technology” and praising progress.
“Bureaucracy, that’s too much of a word in Europe,” he said on stage in a conversation with Viva Tech founder Maurice Levy. “When we started 10 years ago, no one was talking about AI. There wasn’t even a word for it. But now, thanks to AI, we can kill some of the bureaucracy.”
The head of the world’s most valuable fashion conglomerate said he still considers his group a start-up.
“I still think of my group as a startup. We are a conglomerate of startups,” he said. “the goal [of a startup] It’s about growing and becoming a big company…but you have to keep that spirit, and that spirit is still there. ”
The group announced the winners of its Innovation Awards, betting that the next wave of growth will come not only from generative AI but also from technologies that improve transparency, brand discovery and operational efficiency across the business.
The winners offer a glimpse into the group’s overall technology priorities as LVMH increases investment in artificial intelligence while responding to changing consumer expectations for sustainability, reliability and customer experience.
This year, we honored supply chain transparency platform Fairly Made, AI search optimization startup Bluefish, and video generation company Synthesia.
Fairly Made won the Best Impact award for its work helping brands trace raw materials and components throughout their supply chain.
“There was no debate. I think this work definitely stood out,” Gonzag de Pillay, LVMH’s chief omnichannel and data officer, said of the jury’s selection process.
“This is a huge challenge for the luxury goods industry,” said Frank Le Mole, director of IT and technology at LVMH Group.
The group began working with Fairy Maid four years ago on traceability across its supply chain, and Fairy Maid has become an increasingly important partner as luxury consumers demand greater transparency about the environmental impact of raw material sourcing and production.
“They’re becoming something between a startup and a scale-up, and this is actually a company that we’re leveraging at scale,” he said. Fairly Made is currently used by 14 houses including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Celine and more.
Traceability is both a requirement for sustainability and an advantage for luxury goods, especially among young consumers. “It’s becoming increasingly important for brands and it’s highly valued by customers, especially the younger generation,” de Pillay said.
The Most Promising Award went to Bluefish, a US-based startup founded in 2024 and working in the emerging field of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). The platform helps you understand how your brand is expressed across large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
De Pirey and Le Moal explained that this technology is becoming increasingly important as consumers move from traditional search engines to AI assistants when researching products and brands.
“We’re seeing a huge uptick in customer demand for information,” Le Mole said. “A significant number of our clients are now turning to the LLM first.”
Bluefish allows brands to measure how they rank within AI-generated answers and provides recommendations to improve visibility and representation across different platforms.
“This is where people discover brands, so it’s important for brands to represent themselves well in this agent world,” de Pirie said.
Synthesia won Best Business Award for its AI-powered video generation platform. LVMH uses the platform to create training content for employees across its Maisons.
The technology has been used across the group to rapidly produce multilingual training materials and educational content without the high costs of traditional video production. Videos are generated for each product and fashion collection.
“The time saved, the money saved and the quality of the results are outstanding,” said de Pirie.
But the pair maintained that humanity remains at the heart of luxury. They emphasized that the generation technology will only be used internally and will not be used in customer-facing advertising or media. “As soon as we start dealing with customers, we like people,” Le Mole said.
