PARIS — Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, was working his second job Thursday morning, missing the annual Innovation Awards at the VivaTech fair.

LVMH’s head of communication, image and environment, Antoine Arnault, stepped into his father’s shoes to apologize to the crowd and congratulate the winners.

“You might have noticed that, on top of his multiple hats, he also became recently a diplomat, and his diplomacy skills made him unable to attend today,” said the younger Arnault of his father’s whereabouts. “But it’s nothing more than that, and he’s very sad that he couldn’t be here,” he added, heading off any speculation at the pass.

The winners were selected from LVMH’s Maison des Startups and judged on new criteria this year, including the ability to collaborate with brands and capability to scale quickly.

Real-time predictive audience segmentation AI Kahoona, partnered with Dior, took the best business prize for its ability to read the “digital body language” of anonymous site visitors; soil health measurement system Genesis, collaborating with Moët Hennessy, took the Impact Prize; and digital twin 3D AI content creation studio OMI, partnering with Guerlain, took the Most Promising prize.

Tiffany & Co. stepped in for the first time to create the trophy, and on stage, representatives from each winning team asked Arnault a question on business leadership.

“You need a little bit of craziness sometimes, and you need to take crazy decisions once in a while,” he said, citing the decision of Bernard Arnault hiring John Galliano to head the house of Christian Dior when he was just a “young British [designer] with a bit of a bad reputation.”

Imparting the lessons he’s learned from the luxury business, Arnault said that when Amazon started growing into the shopping behemoth it is today, his father went against the grain and opened bigger, flashier retail spaces to transform shopping into entertainment.

“He tried to prove that you needed temples — not to worship luxury products — but at least to have a great experience, and to go in there and meet people, drink a glass of Champagne, take your time, and then maybe take a crazy decision on buying very expensive products,” he said.

After the ceremony, winners were treated to a live engraving of their name on the trophy, Oscars-style.

Other heavy hitters made their way to the convention center in the south of Paris, including French President Emmanuel Macron and prime minister François Bayrou. The newly minted superstar speaking slot went to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Overall, this year’s programming bid bye-bye to blockchain and adios to AR — the exhibitor and speaker lineup was heavy on companies with an AI angle.

However, this is a generational shift and not just another trend, said LVMH chief information officer Franck Le Moal.

“AI and genAI are definitely a strong transformation,” he told WWD. “It will not be a kind of buzz word, a bit like ‘metaverse’ was. It’s really becoming part of the day-to-day processes” integrated throughout systems across the company, he said.

Le Moal said LVMH is supporting its workforce in learning AI as a tool and has created two academies within the conglomerate to educate staff at all levels on a “new way of working.”

He highlighted several use cases being tested at LVMH, including using AI in marketing to adjust content for different countries and social platforms, and using generative AI to create photo-realistic content.

The company also renewed its partnership with Google Cloud, focusing on developing new AI, including an internal version of Google’s Gemini called MaIA, and is developing AI agents for retail sales and client outreach. AI is already deployed in supply chain forecasting and inventory optimization.

“We can use technology to adjust and make our supply chain even more efficient in a very unpredictable context,” he said, framing production within the current climate and geopolitical challenges. “We are facing agility, being able to answer very quickly to the context in China, in the U.S., in Europe, being able to adjust our production and distribution.”

Kahoona’s tech uses what cofounder Gal Rapoport called “digital body language,” finger size, movements, and signals that can be analyzed by AI to identify and understand the personality of an anonymous shopper. Rapoport said research shows that 96 percent of visitors to a website are anonymous, and only 0.5 to 3 percent of those visitors convert to a sale. Early data demonstrates that the hyper-personalization and segmentation that comes along with personality detection drives engagement up over 10 times.

Brands in Control of AI Advertising

Advertising is now in the hands of the brands, which can create product campaigns or use virtual models that can be ordered up in minutes.

Most Promising Prize winner OMI’s tech makes a digital twin of any item, which can then be used inside an “endless photoshoot,” manipulating positioning, light reflecting, and altering ratios for platform compatibility. OMI’s rendered images are photorealistic and give the power to the brands to create their own ads and media, be it the design, marketing or e-commerce team — pretty much any team in an organization — with the same 3D model at the core.

“The main advantage is that it’s a non-technical skills-related solution,” said OMI product manager Swen Hueber. Without need for an engineer, it significantly reduces ad production costs and time down to a few hours.

Elsewhere, brands can now mix-and-match model features, much like shopping online, with AI photo studio Veeton. The start-up’s tech can replicate a full photoshoot within two hours, said cofounder and CEO Flore Lestrade.

Fashion brands have been working with existing tech like Midjourney to create images, but they can still wander in the uncanny valley. “That’s something fashion brands are actively working on — de-AI-ifying those images,” said Lestrade.

Veeton offers a menu of virtual models to select from, adjustable for body types, pose, race, style and age. Users can upload flat pack shots, and the AI will create a look from its dataset of over 50 million fashion images. Subtleties such as facial expressions or posture can be adjusted with prompts to match creative direction without the need for engineers or editors, she said.

Veeton has already worked with Showroomprivé and will roll out to more fashion brands and retailers soon.

Smart Tech vs. Style

EssilorLuxottica CEO Paul du Saillant and Publicis Groupe Chair Emeritus Maurice Levy took the stage to tout the eyewear maker’s partnership between its Ray-Ban brand and Meta to create connected glasses. Du Saillant said Google’s attempt at connected glasses didn’t work a decade ago because they “did not address the style element.”

Levy said he doesn’t go into a meeting these days without wearing a pair of the glasses — which can record video and audio, amplify sound, and alert wearers of emails and text messages in real time.

The eyewear company is preparing to “expand aggressively” and will roll out more styles and possibly partnerships with other brands soon.

Sustainability as a Long-term Strategy

EBay France general manager Sarah Tayeb and Vestiaire Collective chief impact officer Dounia Wone both addressed the apparent contradiction of using AI, which consumes significant amounts of energy and water, to simplify resale or refurbished goods shopping. Both use tech that can help create and translate listings, as well as assist with search to help nudge consumer behavior.

“We need to take a step back,” said Wone. AI can help these businesses “grow in an industry that is very much a huge polluting industry,” she said, and help create a circular economy. By adding ease, AI support enables more people to enter the resale ecosystem and has helped double sales of suggested items.

“It’s an opportunity, because sustainability tech needs to be aligned with growth,” she said.

Sustainability data management platform Sweep works with fashion brands including Burberry, Lacoste, and The Kooples, and beauty brands such as Caudalie, to collect and monitor environmental and carbon data throughout their supply chains, as well as build transition plans.

Sweep cofounder and CEO Rachel Delacour emphasized that companies should see sustainability as a key driver of transformation, as it helps break down departmental silos and establishes sustainability as a core business pillar.

It’s a tricky global moment with the new Trump tariffs upending global trade and the EU potentially rolling back some sustainability reporting regulations, but Delacour said that while fashion brands are becoming more cautious, they aren’t abandoning sustainability altogether.

“The fashion brands we are talking with are telling us, ‘We can’t waste four years of data collection,’” she said. Instead, the uncertainty is acting as an accelerator for companies to make a stronger business case for sustainable supply chains.

Regardless of how the regulations play out, both European and U.S.-based companies see sustainability as necessary to future-proofing their businesses.

“It has actually accelerated the sustainability understanding and how they must engage with their value chain and [demonstrate] the ROI of all this for the CEO and the board members,” she said. “There are finite resources on this planet. There will be winners and losers. The ones who are not able to transition to a low carbon economy in their business and in their value chain, they won’t be here in the next 10 years.”