Billionaire Bernard Arnault lauds mathematics in $74 million alma mater gift

PARIS – Billionaire Bernard Arnault extolled the virtues of mathematics after pledging a record €50 million (S$73.89 million) donation for a planned maths research institute at his alma mater, highlighting the discipline’s importance in a world increasingly shaped by AI.

“It’s the topic of sovereignty,” the billionaire said at an official ceremony in Paris on July 2, laying out the reasons behind this donation to Polytechnique, the prestigious military engineering school where he graduated in 1971.

“We can see it every day, more and more with artificial intelligence, the one who masters mathematics, masters the affairs of the coming world.”

The gift, announced last week, was made via Agache, his family holding company which controls LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, the luxury conglomerate Arnault heads.

The donation will fund the future building of the institute to be located in Palaiseau, on the outskirts of Paris where the school is based, as well as a maths residency whose goal will be to host international researchers and organise conferences.

The July 2 event was hosted by Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu at the military complex Les Invalides in central Paris where Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb lays.

Lecornu praised the donation as a patriotic move by Europe’s wealthiest person, whose net worth is estimated at about US$165 billion (S$213.08  billion) according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Polytechnique, the ultra-selective engineering school, launched a campaign to raise a total of €200 million in donations in November 2024, Frederic Oudea, chairman of the school’s foundation and a former chief executive officer of Societe Generale, said.

Arnault’s move is the biggest donation ever to Polytechnique since its creation in 1794, known in France as “l’X”, and the biggest donation to any university in the country, Oudea, himself a 1985 graduate of the school, added.

While significant for France, the sum pales in comparison to some gifts in the US.

Recently Nvidia Corp director Mark Stevens and his wife donated US$175 million to develop a medical school in the San Francisco Bay area, near the headquarters of the maker of the key chips that are crucial to the AI race.

“Polytechnique for me was a very important moment of my life,” Arnault said, adding that he likely inherited the interest for maths and sciences from his father Jean, who’d graduated from Centrale, another top engineering school.

Arnault, who’s also a regular pianist, said he sometimes continues to work on math problems with some of his sons.

“Maths are very linked to music, so when one plays music, in a certain way one is working on maths,” he told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the event.

His son Frederic, who graduated from Polytechnique in computational and applied mathematics in 2018, was present at the ceremony as well as two other sons, Antoine and Alexandre, who himself holds a master of science in innovation from the school.

Arnault is known to have helped his children on math homework during their upbringing.

His five children all work at LVMH or one of its brands.

“It’s important that France and Europe in general become significant powers when it comes to artificial intelligence but we’re lagging a bit,” the billionaire said.

June’s IPO of SpaceX, founded and led by Elon Musk, gave the tech entrepreneur a significant boost to his net worth which now stands at around US$992 billion.

Arnault said that Musk is one of his friends in comments to Bloomberg at the event.

The billionaires famously shared a lunch in the French capital three years ago.

Arnault has seen his wealth drop by about US$42 billion in 2026 amid a slump in demand for luxury goods which hurt shares of LVMH leading them down by almost 24 per cent over the same period.

An AI-fuelled wealth creation could potentially boost demand for high-ends goods, Bain predicted last week.

Arnault’s family and LVMH have been known to be patrons of the art and culture with a €200 million donation notably to help rebuild the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral after it partially burnt in a fire in 2019. BLOOMBERG