LVMH leans into AI personalization

LVMH is pushing beauty shopping toward the same idea that runs TikTok and Spotify: show each person a different feed, a different recommendation, and eventually a different product. In March 2026, Sephora, which is owned by LVMH, launched an app inside ChatGPT that gives users tailored beauty suggestions through an artificial intelligence chat interface. (newsroom.sephora.com) That move did not come out of nowhere. Sephora already runs tools like Smart Skin Scan for customized skincare recommendations, Artificial Intelligence Beauty Chat for routines and gift ideas, and a shade finder quiz for makeup matching on its website and app. (sephora.com) LVMH has been building the plumbing for this for years. On its own careers and strategy pages, the group says its digital, data, and artificial intelligence teams are meant to deliver client experiences online and in stores across the company’s brands. (lvmh.com) The beauty division is the obvious place to test it. LVMH’s perfumes and cosmetics arm sells products where one customer wants a cool undertone foundation, another wants acne-safe skincare, and a third wants a rose fragrance that does not smell powdery, so software can narrow choices faster than a store shelf can. (lvmh.com) The company is also trying to make personalization feel luxurious rather than mechanical. At Viva Technology 2025, LVMH highlighted a Dior partnership with Kahoona that personalizes online visits in real time and adapts the customer journey across touchpoints, which is corporate language for changing what a shopper sees based on signals from that session. (lvmh.com) LVMH liked that project enough to spotlight it again at its 2025 Innovation Award ceremony. There, the group said Kahoona’s predictive audience segmentation for anonymous online visitors took personalized customer experience to “an unprecedented level,” and it gave the startup the Best Business Prize. (lvmh.com) This is aimed straight at younger shoppers who are used to interactive shopping. Sephora’s ChatGPT app promises personalized product recommendations, shopping guidance, and trend discovery inside a conversational tool, which fits a customer who would rather type “I need a sunscreen that won’t pill under makeup” than click through 40 filters. (newsroom.sephora.com) LVMH has the scale to spread these experiments fast if they work. The group says it had 80.8 billion euros in revenue in 2025, more than 6,280 stores, and 75 brands across six business sectors, which gives it money, customer traffic, and lots of places to reuse the same data tools. (lvmh.com) That scale matters because personalization is expensive before it is useful. You need product data that is clean, recommendation systems that do not give nonsense answers, and stores and websites that can actually act on the suggestions, and LVMH’s balance sheet is one reason analysts think it can keep funding that buildout longer than smaller rivals. (morningstar.com) The bet is not just “sell more lipstick.” The bet is that if Dior, Sephora, and LVMH’s other beauty brands can make a shopper feel like the store recognizes her skin, style, shade, and budget on the first try, then personalization stops being a feature and starts becoming part of the brand itself. (simplywall.st)