Richemont: The Opportunities of AI to drive business transformation in luxury businesses

October 28, 2025 at Google Cloud HQ, Zurich

Luxury is often thought of as timeless—defined by centuries of craftsmanship, exclusivity, and cultural prestige. Yet in today’s fast-shifting world, even the most storied maisons cannot rely on heritage alone. Changing customer expectations, sustainability pressures, and the rise of digital lifestyles are forcing transformation. AI, once seen as incompatible with luxury’s artisanal aura, is now becoming its greatest enabler.

From LVMH’s AI “factory” to Cartier’s precision forecasting and Gucci’s immersive storytelling, luxury leaders are showing how AI can transform not only products and experiences, but also business models, operations, and profitability. The result is a new kind of luxury—one that fuses tradition with technology and demonstrates that reinvention can enhance both desirability and shareholder value.

Understanding markets in real time

Historically, luxury relied on intuition, tastemakers, and exclusivity to anticipate trends. But today, AI can detect market shifts at scale and speed. Natural language processing tracks millions of conversations across social media, forums, and fashion communities, picking up on signals of new aesthetics—whether quiet luxury, digital collectibles, or wellness-driven beauty.

  • LVMH, the world’s largest luxury group, has built a centralized AI platform in partnership with Google Cloud. It aggregates data across its 75 maisons to model demand, detect cultural signals, and refine regional strategies. Instead of waiting for seasonal sales reports, executives can now anticipate where luxury appetite is shifting in real time.

  • Richemont, home to Cartier, IWC, and Vacheron Constantin, applies AI forecasting to predict demand for high-ticket jewelry and watches. During the pandemic, Cartier used AI to avoid over $280 million in excess stock, protecting margins and brand equity.

For luxury, this is transformative: AI turns the market from a slow canvas of cultural cues into a living system that can be read in real time.

Understanding the changing consumer

Luxury is no longer defined solely by wealth. Modern buyers care about sustainability, wellness, self-expression, and digital identity. AI allows brands to build multidimensional profiles of customers that go far beyond demographics.

  • Dior uses AI from startup Kahoona to personalize web experiences, even for anonymous visitors. Conversion rates for audiences that previously ignored the brand’s digital campaigns rose significantly.

  • Sephora, owned by LVMH, deploys AI through its Virtual Artist app to analyze skin tones, offer personalized beauty recommendations, and increase shopper confidence.

  • Farfetch, the luxury marketplace, applies AI to segment high-value clients and tailor communication, incentives, and offers—maximizing lifetime value.

Generative AI even allows companies to create evolving personas that simulate how Gen Z, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, or Chinese millennials might change their agendas over time. Instead of reacting, maisons can design ahead of expectations.

Engaging audiences in new ways

Luxury has always been theatrical, built on seduction and storytelling. AI makes engagement both immersive and personalized.

  • Gucci transformed its Chengdu flagship into a digital theater: 33 LED screens display AI-generated imagery blending Renaissance Florence with Sichuan landscapes. This fusion of culture, place, and brand creates an emotionally charged experience unique to the location.

  • Christie’s x Gucci showcased generative-AI art auctions, expanding luxury into the digital and cultural avant-garde.

  • Brunello Cucinelli launched Solomei AI, an AI-driven concierge that speaks in the philosophical, humanistic tone of its founder. It guides customers not just through products, but also the brand’s values, turning technology into a custodian of authenticity.

Conversational AI assistants can now act as 24/7 digital concierges, fluent in a maison’s heritage, offering curated suggestions and cultural context. Engagement shifts from static campaigns to living conversations.

Developing and personalising products

Personalization has always been a hallmark of luxury—think bespoke tailoring, monograms, or signature fragrances. AI elevates this personalization to a new dimension.

  • L’Oréal’s ModiFace uses AI to scan skin and recommend customized skincare routines, while simulating results in real time.

  • Omi, an AI startup in LVMH’s “Maison des Startups,” creates photorealistic 3D twins of products. Guerlain used it for Shalimar perfume campaigns, reducing production time by 30% and cutting carbon footprint by 20%.

  • Generative design tools can suggest silhouettes, colors, and embellishments tailored to individual aesthetics. In the future, luxury fashion may combine AI-driven ideation with artisanal execution, producing one-of-a-kind yet sustainable pieces.

By scaling personalisation while reinforcing craftsmanship, AI ensures that exclusivity is not lost but deepened.

Reinventing business models and pricing

AI is enabling luxury to experiment with new ways of creating value beyond the sale of rare goods.

  • Dynamic Pricing: Algorithms adjust to demand, rarity, and currency fluctuations while maintaining exclusivity. Tiffany, for example, leverages AI to manage regional pricing and protect margins.

  • Membership and Subscription: LVMH is piloting loyalty and membership models enhanced by AI personalization, offering early access to collections, events, and tailored services.

  • Resale and Authenticity: Secondary markets are growing fast. Brands like Cartier and Patou use AI plus blockchain (through the Aura and Arianee consortia) to authenticate items, giving consumers confidence while capturing value from resales.

  • Sustainable Supply Chains: Genesis, another LVMH-backed startup, applies AI to vineyard soil analysis, enabling Moët Hennessy to pursue regenerative agriculture—a business model rooted in luxury terroir sustainability.

These models diversify revenue, reduce dependency on seasonal cycles, and align with shifting customer values.

Expanding channels and digital presence

Luxury distribution has expanded far beyond Parisian boutiques. AI enables maisons to maintain exclusivity across digital platforms, gaming worlds, and e-commerce.

  • Farfetch uses AI to deliver personalized journeys for each shopper, ensuring the platform feels curated, not commoditized.

  • Sales Associates in Tiffany or Dior boutiques now use AI copilots to recall a client’s history, propose personalized outreach, and enhance human interactions with digital intelligence.

  • Omnichannel Logistics: AI optimizes delivery to ensure “white-glove” precision, from climate-controlled shipments of watches to same-day personalized fragrance delivery.

The challenge has always been balancing reach with rarity. AI helps maisons expand digitally while preserving mystique.

Building authenticity

Counterfeiting is a billion-dollar problem for luxury. AI is becoming the industry’s best defense.

  • Computer vision systems can scan microscopic stitching or logos to confirm authenticity instantly.

  • Blockchain provenance, reinforced with AI, ensures every product’s story is traceable—from raw material to atelier to boutique.

  • Patou embeds AI verification at the point of manufacture to prevent fraud and protect trust.

Authenticity, once invisible, becomes a technologically guaranteed feature, further enhancing brand equity.

Serving and delivering to customers

Luxury is as much about service as products—anticipating needs before they’re voiced. AI enhances this anticipation.

  • Predictive models signal when a watch needs servicing or when a client is due for a wardrobe refresh.

  • Conversational AI assistants arrange follow-ups, VIP events, or tailored offers.

  • Some maisons are experimenting with “luxury as a service” models, where AI platforms manage wardrobes, jewelry, or art collections on behalf of clients.

Delivery, whether digital or physical, becomes part of the personalized luxury ecosystem.

Operational performance and sustainability

Behind the scenes, AI is making luxury more efficient, sustainable, and resilient.

  • Richemont applies AI to optimize supply chains, avoiding costly overproduction of materials like diamonds and gold.

  • LVMH uses AI to streamline marketing, automate logistics, and even cut emissions from photoshoots by replacing them with digital twins.

  • Robotic process automation reduces back-office costs, freeing employees for creative or client-facing work.

These efficiency gains strengthen margins, which is critical as growth slows in certain markets. They also reinforce commitments to ESG and regulatory compliance, increasingly important to investors.

Business transformation, and the impact on value creation

The real story lies in how AI is not just supporting—but reinventing—the entire luxury business model.

  • LVMH has outperformed the CAC 40 by over 25% in three years. Analysts attribute part of this to its AI-driven efficiency, personalization, and ability to scale innovations across 75 maisons. Its market cap, hovering above €400 billion, demonstrates investor confidence in its data-driven transformation.

  • Richemont, though smaller, has strengthened profitability in hard luxury by applying AI deeply in forecasting and provenance—critical to protecting its high-value products.

  • Individual maisons like Gucci, Cartier, and Brunello Cucinelli show how AI can augment storytelling, reduce waste, and build trust while staying true to heritage.

The evidence is clear: AI is no longer experimental in luxury—it is a driver of resilience, growth, and shareholder value.

Craftsmanship for a digital age

The paradox of AI in luxury is that it delivers speed, precision, and scale in an industry built on patience, rarity, and craft. Yet far from diluting luxury, it is reinforcing it.

AI helps maisons understand markets in real time, anticipate evolving customers, craft personalized products, explore new business models, and strengthen authenticity and sustainability. At the same time, it boosts efficiency and profitability, aligning shareholder value with cultural and creative relevance.

The maisons that thrive will not treat AI as a threat, nor as a cold efficiency tool. They will embrace it as a new craftsman—one capable of weaving data, imagination, and heritage into experiences as rare and desirable as the finest couture gown or the most intricate mechanical watch.

In doing so, luxury will not only adapt to the future, but actively shape it—proving that reinvention is the truest form of timelessness.