PARIS — LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton chairman and chief executive officer Bernard Arnault opened the 10th edition of Viva Tech – calling itself the “Fashion Week of Tech” – singing the praises of progress.
“Bureaucracy, it’s a word that is too much present in Europe,” he said, taking the stage for a conversation with Viva Tech founder Maurice Levy. “When we started 10 years ago, nobody was talking about AI, it was not even a word. But now thanks to AI, we are able to kill part of the bureaucracy.”
The head of the world’s most valuable fashion conglomerate said that he still thinks of his group as a startup.
“I still consider my group a startup. We are conglomerate of startups,” he said. “The goal [of a startup] is to grow and become a big company…but you must keep the spirit, and the 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 from tech that improves transparency, brand discovery and operational efficiency across its businesses.
The winners offer a peek into the group’s overall tech priorities as LVMH increasingly invests in artificial intelligence while navigating shifting consumer expectations on sustainability, authenticity and customer experience.
This year it recognized supply-chain transparency platform Fairly Made, AI search optimization startup Bluefish and video generation company Synthesia.
Fairly Made received the Best Impact Award for its work helping brands trace raw materials and components throughout their supply chains.
“There was no debate. I think this one was clearly standing out,” said Gonzague de Pirey, LVMH’s chief omnichannel and data officer, describing the jury’s selection process.
“It’s a big challenge for the luxury industry,” said LVMH group IT and technology director Frank Le Moal.
The group began working with Fairly Made four years ago on traceability across its supply chain, and it has become an increasingly important partner as luxury consumers demand greater transparency around sourcing of raw materials and the environmental impact of production.
“They are becoming a mix between a startup and scaleup, and really this is a company we are using at scale,” he said. Fairly Made is now used across 14 maisons, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Celine, among others.
Traceability has become both a sustainability requirement and a luxury advantage, particularly among younger consumers. “It’s more and more critical for the brands and it’s valued very much by the customers, especially for the young generations,” de Pirey said.
The Most Promising Award went to Bluefish, a U.S.-based startup founded in 2024 that operates in the emerging field of generative engine optimization, or GEO. The platform helps brands understand how they are represented across large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
De Pirey and Le Moal described the technology as increasingly important as consumers shift from traditional search engines toward AI assistants when researching products and brands.
“We see a significant turnaround where customers are looking for information,” said Le Moal. “A significant number of customers are now going to 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.
“Because this is where people will discover the brand, it is critical to the brand to ensure that we have the right representation of the brand in this agentic world,” de Pirey said.
Synthesia received the Best Business Award for its AI-powered video generation platform, which LVMH is using to create training content for employees across its maisons.
The tech has so far been used throughout the group to rapidly produce multilingual training materials and educational content without the high cost of traditional video production. Videos are generated for each product and fashion collection.
“The time you gain, the money you save, and the quality of the outcome is so good,” de Pirey said.
However, the duo maintained that the human touch remains central to luxury. Both emphasized that the generative tech will be used only in-house, and not on customer-facing advertising or media. “As soon as we are customer-facing, we prefer a human,” Le Moal said
