×
Salesforce Invests in Brunello Cucinelli’s AI Platform

Salesforce Invests in Brunello Cucinelli’s AI Platform

Fashion news , ,

MILAN- Salesforce is investing in Brunello Cucinelli’s AI platform.

Cucinelli launched Solomei AI, the company behind the brand’s Callimacus platform, in 2024 and on Monday Salesforce and the Italian designer revealed they had entered into an agreement that will allow Callimacus to expand its engineering and AI research capabilities and accelerate commercial growth across Europe and North America.

 “It is with a certain pride and with genuine satisfaction that I present a project that opens up extraordinary possibilities for technology in the years to come,” said Cucinelli, chairman of Solomei AI. “Three years ago, Marc Benioff and I began an endeavor with mathematicians, philosophers, humanists, and technologists, from which Callimacus was born. Our idea was to create a simple, intuitive product capable of speaking the language of human beings; a sort of new web, without pages, categories, or predetermined paths, able to accompany the intent of each individual navigator. I look with great confidence and hope for the path that Callimacus will pursue with Salesforce’s investment. There are numerous applications that Callimacus may have across many sectors worldwide and it is an honour for me to invite our clients to discover the freedom to learn, to choose, and to act within our digital lives.”

In January, Cucinelli unveiled the brand’s new e-commerce platform underpinned by AI, an evolution of the site launched in 2024 and developed by Solomei AI, a small research center created at Cucinelli’s headquarters to explore the creative, scientific and technological applications of AI.

The concept of Callimacus is that there are no conventional pages, through a system that understands and follows the intention of the user for a personalized experience. At the time, Cucinelli touted the potential of Callimacus, named after the Greek scholar and poet, praised by the entrepreneur and designer also for his role of cataloguing and safeguarding the vast collection of the great Library of Alexandria.

Callimacus uses an orchestra of AI agents to understand each visitor’s intent and compose a personalized experience in real time, integrating traditional digital and e-commerce systems. The company is patenting the technology behind its real-time experience generation.

“Brunello has always believed that technology should elevate humanity, and that conviction is at the heart of Callimacus,” said Benioff, chair and chief executive officer of Salesforce. “The team has developed an innovative platform that reimagines AI-powered experiences—bringing together conversational AI, enterprise context, and real-time personalization to create entirely new ways for businesses to engage with their customers. We’re proud to partner with Brunello and the Solomei AI team as they pioneer a new generation of AI-powered experiences.”

Brunello Cucinelli at Dreamforce 2017, with Salesforce ceo Marc Benioff.

Adriana Lee

Salesforce will join the founders and seed shareholders, including Foro delle Arti S.p.A., the Cucinelli family holding company.

Cucinelli has not only built a business selling his luxury collections to Silicon Valley leaders, but also a network of personal relationships nurtured over the course of several years, with the likes Benioff and Jeff Bezos, centered around the common goal of “humanizing technology, sharing questions about eternity and leaving a mark on earth.”

It all dates back to 2016 when Benioff and Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom invited Cucinelli to a dinner in San Francisco, asking him to talk about his humanistic vision. In the two following years, Benioff asked Cucinelli to be a guest at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual tech conference in San Francisco. This also led to the Universal Symposiums on Soul and Economics hosted by Cucinelli at his restored Italian hamlet of Solomeo to discuss humanistic values and digital ethics, drawing the likes of Benioff, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Kevin Scott, chief technology officer of Microsoft, among others.

The transaction falls within the scope of Italy’s “golden power” regulation, which applies to technology assets deemed to be of strategic national importance. The closing of the transaction is contingent on authorization by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (Department for Administrative Coordination), as well as other closing conditions.

Source link
#Salesforce #Invests #Brunello #Cucinellis #Platform

Tag
Previous post

Emma Roberts Stuns in Custom Monique Lhuillier Gown as She Marries Cody John

Next post

Europe got its own TBPN-style live show, and everyone’s angling for a guest spot | TechCrunch<div> <p id="speakable-summary" class="wp-block-paragraph">The European answer to TBPN is here and ready to go live five days a week, starting June 27. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Luke Knight and Ronan Chambers first launched the London-based <a rel="nofollow" href="https://etnshow.co/">European Technology Network (ETN)</a> last October, breaking down tech trends and news during a two-day-a-week live stream. Right now, the show is live-streamed on X and YouTube and has garnered more than 5 million views. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">On Monday, the network announced a $1.6 million seed round from top players in the media ecosystem, including Powerhouse Capital, Axel Springer SE (which owns Business Insider and Politico), the popular media publication LadBible, and angel investors from OpenAI and DeepMind. With this fresh capital, the network is announcing its largest expansion yet. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">It’s now moving into a big studio in Kings Cross (where all the hot London AI startups are situated), expanding the team (right now of just eight), launching a newsletter, and is, starting today, moving into a five-day-a-week live show schedule, which will soon see Knight and Chambers interview the likes of George Robson (a partner at Sequoia) and Rishi Sunak (former UK Prime Minister and senior advisor to Anthropic and Microsoft). </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Speaking to TechCrunch, Knight and Chambers said ETN has already become a hot stop on the press tour for European startups — they’ve spoken to the founder of Synthesia, the CFO of Legora, the founder of Granola, and Kanishka Narayan, the UK’s first AI Minister. They’ve even had American investors stop by the show when they are in town, including one from Andreessen Horowitz.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">“ETN was born out of a gaping hole in the industry,” Chambers told TechCrunch. “It’s centered around pace.” He said the current media ecosystem in the UK cannot keep up with how fast the tech scene is moving. For example, so far this year, London startups have raised $14.7 billion according to Dealroom. Six companies have raised more than $500 million: Wayve, Superintelligence, ElevenLabs, Recursive, Ineffable Intelligence, and Isomorphic Labs, the latter three of which were founded by DeepMind alumni.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">“These are things that have never happened in Europe before,” Chambers continued, referring to the speed at which capital is flowing through the ecosystem. As the show became more popular, Chambers said they were getting around 70 pitches a week from guests looking to come on the show. They would try and cram 12 interviews into two hours, twice a week, but eventually it got too much. “We needed an outlet that could move at the pace of that,” he said of both the interest in the show and how fast Europe’s tech ecosystem is moving, “which is the reason we’re going from two days a week to five days a week.” </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The five-day format will look quite similar to the two-day format. There will be a live show from 12 p.m. UK time to 3 p.m., breaking down trending stories, and then for two hours, they will have guests on the show talking about whatever they want. Chambers said they also want to start hosting debates, roundtables, and a Shark Tank-style pitching session on the show. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">“We want to make it as useful as we can for the ecosystem,” Chambers said. “There needs to be more discourse around AI in Europe. There needs to be more discourse around venture capital and cash flowing into the ecosystem. There needs to be more discourse around the amazing things that are happening in the tech ecosystem, and our role is to be the stage in which people can shout about all the amazing things they’re doing.” </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The show makes its money from ad dollars, like most media publications, and big-name sponsors already include prediction market Polymarket, blockchain company Base, and the AI audio darling ElevenLabs. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">When asked about the influence TBPN has had on them, Knight and Chambers said they indeed do look at John Coogan and Jordi Hays, founders of TBPN (which recently<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/02/openai-acquires-tbpn-the-buzzy-founder-led-business-talk-show/"> sold to OpenAI</a> for what some say was a nine-figure sum), as pioneers of this new tech media ecosystem. The show became a place for tech guests to appear and chat with friendly faces, announcing new product releases, hires, or funding news. “My thinking was, if we can have an ITV and a BBC, why wouldn’t we have a regional version of this?” Chambers continued. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Europe is a big place, though, with more than 40 different countries and over 200 languages spoken (24 of which are recognized by the European Union). Chambers said that although ETN will report from London, he and Knight are making an effort to bring on guests from across the continent. Aside from bringing guests into the studio, they also travel to the hottest tech conferences around Europe. For example, they’ve broadcast from the Panathenaea Conference in Athens and from inside the Louvre in Paris for the RAISE AI Summit. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">“You have all these different cultures, these different minds coming together and creating different products,” Chambers said. “You get a taste of what makes [Europe] a superpower.” </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">With all this, they said they would never turn an American founder away should they want to come on the show. “It’s a European technology network, but we think there’s massive [global] opportunities,” Chambers said. Knight added to that, noting how often conversations pit the European tech ecosystem against that of the U.S. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">“We are globally optimistic,” Knight said. “We are pushing global prosperity from Europe. Wherever you want to go and build your company, wherever is the best place to go and build that company, go and do that, and we will shout for you to go and do that.” </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">He and Chambers also don’t necessarily see themselves as journalists; rather, they consider themselves tech insiders curious about what is going on and why. They also don’t see themselves as replacing traditional media and instead intend to work in tandem with those publications. “We rely on traditional media,” Chambers said, adding that is how they find much of the news that they to talk about on ETN. </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Overall, the duo hopes to help document the stories coming from the new wave of European success, from ElevenLabs in London to Lovable in Stockholm, to help the upcoming generation understand that technology is one way to drive a nation forward.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Discussing the impact of European success stories, Chambers said, “It riles up the next generation to the point where it’s no longer cool to finish university and go into banking or consulting. People want to leave university and go straight into building a startup, and I think that’s an amazing thing.”</p> </div><p><em>When you purchase through links in our articles, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/techcrunch-affiliate-monetization-standards/">we may earn a small commission</a>. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.</em></p>#Europe #TBPNstyle #live #show #everyones #angling #guest #spot #TechCrunchEurope,London,UK

Related Posts

Post Comment

Wolfnewss | Powered By SpiceThemes