The head of the world's largest luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault, presents the group's 2022 annual results in Paris on January 26, 2023.
Stefano Rellandini | AFP | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared on CNBC's Inside Wealth with Robert Frank, a weekly guide for high-net-worth investors and consumers. Register to receive future issues directly to your inbox.
Luxury king Bernard Arnault buys artificial intelligence companies.
Arnault, founder and CEO of LVMH and the fourth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $184 billion, has made a number of investments in artificial intelligence this year through his technology-focused venture firm and family office, called Aglaé Ventures.
Aglaé has made five AI-related investments in 2024, according to data provided exclusively to CNBC by Fintrx, the private equity intelligence platform. While the amounts of Aglaé’s investments are not disclosed, funding rounds for AI companies totaled more than $300 million, according to Fintrx.
The largest funding round this year, according to Fintrx, went to a company called H, formerly known as Holistic AI, a French startup that is working toward full artificial general intelligence. It was founded by former members of from google DeepMind’s AI unit includes venture capital firm Accel Partners LP and former Google chief executive Wendy and Eric Schmidt as investors. The $220 million round in May, which also included Aglaé, valued H at $370 million, according to the company.
Aglaé also invested in a $25 million seed round for Lamini, a Palo Alto, California-based startup that develops AI applications for businesses. In April, Aglaé participated in a $12 million Series A funding round for Proxima, an AI-powered digital marketing company based in New York.
Aglaé joined Susquehanna in investing in the $27 million seed round of Borderless AI, a Toronto-based human resource management platform. It also invested in Photoroom, an AI-powered image editor based in France, as part of a $43 million investment round in February.
While many of Aglaé’s AI investments are recent, it invested in four funding rounds between 2017 and 2019 in Meero, an AI-powered photo creation company based in Paris, according to Fintrx.
The family office's other investments this year included Sonarverse, a blockchain company based in Irvine, California, and Shimmer, a San Francisco-based ADHD coaching provider.
Since 2017, Aglaé has made a total of 153 investments, according to Fintrx data, 53 in technology, 17 in consumer goods, 13 in business services and 12 in financial services.
Among its other investments are Noom, a digital health platform, and World Music Media, a music creation app. Aglaé was part of several funding rounds for Back Market, a French marketplace for refurbished electronics that in 2022 reported a valuation of $5.7 billion.
Since the Arnault family fortune is so concentrated in LVMH, with the family owning about 48% of the shares and controlling 64% of the voting rights, Aglaé has little reason to invest in luxury.
However, Arnault and his family are big art collectors, and Aglaé was an investor in a $9.5 million funding round for LaCollection, a digital art platform. LVMH has been rapidly expanding into the luxury watch segment, and Aglaé was an investor in the $108 million funding round in 2021 for watch trading platform Chrono24.
While renowned for his dedication to luxury craftsmanship, historic brands and emotional connections to designs and artists, Arnault is also a big fan of technology with a history of backing successful tech companies. His family office was one of the first investors in Netflix In 1999, Spotify in 2014 and Airbnb in 2015.
In a speech at the LVMH Innovation Awards in May, Arnault said he invested in 75 start-ups in the 1990s and that “some of them succeeded, but many did not.”
“The startup mentality is very close to our values: creativity, quality, it has to work, entrepreneurial spirit and sense,” he said.
