Luxury Conglomerate Also Loves AI.
On August 20th, according to data provided by the private wealth intelligence platform Fintrx, Bernard Arnault, the founder and CEO of the world's largest luxury group LVMH, is investing in a series of artificial intelligence startups through his family's office, Aglaé Ventures. It is reported that since 2024 alone, Aglaé Ventures has made five AI-related investments totaling over $300 million.
Aglaé Ventures is an investment company with a history of over 20 years, focusing on the fields of technology and innovation. The company's investment strategy includes supporting promising startups to promote technological innovation and industrial upgrading. Aglaé Ventures' investment areas cover cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing. Through these investments, the LVMH group may have gained new growth points.
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In addition, Aglaé Ventures also cooperates with some well-known investment institutions to jointly invest in promising startups. This cooperation helps to achieve resource sharing and risk diversification.
Among them, the largest AI investment target of Aglaé Ventures this year is the French startup H, which is committed to achieving Full Artificial General Intelligence. H, formerly known as Holistic AI, was founded by former employees of Google's DeepMind AI department, and other investors include well-known venture capital firm Accel Partners and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
According to media reports in May, H raised $220 million in initial financing from several billionaires and venture capitalists, promising to create the next generation of powerful artificial intelligence tools, namely the "super AI" that can be applied to a wide range of tasks. At that time, the company was valued at $370 million.
In addition, this year Aglaé Ventures also participated in the $25 million seed round of Lamini, a California-based startup building enterprise-level AI applications, participated in the $12 million Series A round of Proxima, an AI-driven digital marketing company in New York, invested $27 million in the seed round of Borderless AI, a Canadian human resource management platform, together with financial services giant Susquehanna, participated in the $43 million financing of Photoroom, a French AI image editor, and invested in Sonarverse, a California-based blockchain company, and Shimmer, a provider of ADHD tutor services.
Data shows that since 2017, Aglaé Ventures has made a total of 153 investments, of which 53 belong to the technology field, 17 are in the consumer goods field, 13 are in the business services field, and 12 are in the financial services field. The institution has recently increased its investment in the AI field. The institution has also invested in digital health platform Noom, music creation application World Music Media, and participated in multiple rounds of financing for Back Market, a French refurbished electronic products market platform, and Meero, a French artificial intelligence photo creation company.
According to the official website of Aglaé Ventures, this global technology venture capital company focusing on early and growth stages is an early investor in many well-known technology companies such as Airbnb, Lyft, Netflix, Slack, and the emerging music streaming platform Spotify. Some analysts believe that this is because Arnault himself is a technology enthusiast, who has stated that he invested in 75 startups in the 1990s.As a leader in the global luxury goods industry, the LVMH Group brings together 75 renowned brands and operates across five major business sectors, truly a powerhouse in finance. The company's performance in the first half of 2024 showed revenues as high as 41.7 billion euros, with a net profit reaching 7.267 billion euros. The head of the company, Bernard Arnault, is a regular on the list of the top ten richest people. At the beginning of 2024, Arnault even became the world's richest person with a net worth of 207.8 billion dollars.
In May of this year, the LVMH Group awarded its 2024 Innovation Prize to FancyTech, a Chinese technology company focused on short video algorithm models and generative AI (emerging from the times). This company's generative AI uses 3D product models and creative briefs to automatically generate commercial videos, and has already started e-commerce and marketing collaborations with several brands under the LVMH umbrella.
Some speculate that the luxury giant's investment in an artificial intelligence startup, in addition to bringing tangible benefits such as "retail optimization," "forecasting labor demand," and "optimizing daily schedules" to improve operational efficiency for its subsidiaries, also helps to cultivate the next generation of successful entrepreneurs, who could all become elite loyal customers of the LVMH Group.