Ardian is one of the world’s leading private investment firms, managing or advising on $166 billion of assets for more than 1,650 clients worldwide. Specializing in private equity, real assets and credit, Ardian offers clients of all types, from individual investors to private banks and wealth managers, a wide range of investment opportunities to meet their specific needs.

As a company majority-owned by its employees, Ardian places great emphasis on talent development and values a collaborative culture based on collective intelligence. Ardian’s more than 1,050 employees are spread across 19 offices in Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East.

Ardian is not only a global leader in private investment, but a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence in the financial services sector, where AI is rapidly transforming the industry.

Aware that the integration of artificial intelligence is an essential lever for optimizing process efficiency and fostering technological development, Ardian collaborated with Artefact Open Innovation and Microsoft to organize its third AI hackathon, Ardian Startup Studio III.

The hackathon aimed to embody and reinforce their company culture by:

  • Creating useful projects for teams, customers, and the organization as a whole.

  • Improving customer or manager support by adopting their perspective.

  • Bringing people together in a friendly atmosphere to discover different departments and professions.

A hackathon to use artificial intelligence as a resource for improving Ardian’s value proposition

An international call for applications open to all Ardian employees was enthusiastically greeted by 60 participants, who proposed 40 ideas leveraging artificial intelligence to address the company’s concrete and current challenges.

The hackathon leveraged cutting-edge technology and the best methodologies of its collaborating entities:

  • Ardian employees applied their skills to developing new uses for cutting-edge technologies.

  • Artefact’s data engineers and AI experts provided strategic advice, data and AI expertise, and support for the realization of the POCs.

  • Artefact’s Open Innovation facilitators helped projects move forward by guiding them through defining the problem, developing the value propostion and business model, and driving rapid prototyping and the use of AI to quickly bring ideas to life through the work of Artefact’s data scientists.

Supported by experts from Microsoft and Artefact, Ardian’s teams worked on all stages of developing generative AI use cases applicable to their respective fields and needs, from ideation to the design of functional prototypes to be developed, primarily using Microsoft’s AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot, Azure, and Open AI.

Developing viable AI and generative AI use case prototypes in under three days

Day one: Turning forty projects into nine.

On the first day of the hackathon, the forty proposed projects were whittled down to nine after a vote by the participants. Nine teams were then formed, one to oversee each project.

Day two: Defining, refining, designing.

  • Session one: Supervised by Artefact’s design thinking experts, the teams identified problems, defined their scope and ensured that their solutions met real needs.

  • Session two: To place the user at the heart of the innovation process, personas were created to increase the relevance and effectiveness of the solutions developed.

  • Session three: The teams focused on designing solutions and fine-tuning them.

  • At the same time, data scientists and students began work on the technical aspect of the project, producing a mockup and prototype.

Day three: Finalizing. Pitching to the jury. Awards!

  • The teams finalized their projects and prepared their pitches.

  • All nine teams pitched their proposals in front of a jury, who selected the three that will be further developed. The jury was composed if Ardian CEO Mathias Burghardt, and other top Ardian executives, Philippe Limantour, Chief Technolohy Offucer and CyberSecurity Officer of Microsoft France, and Jérôme Petit, Managing Partner at Artefact.

  • An awards ceremony was held for the three selected projects. The three winning projects will build an MVP with Artefact in the coming months.

“We’re proud to have accompanied Ardian during this event dedicated to generative AI. Thanks to our design thinking specialists and data science experts, we helped passionate teams of Ardian talent to design and model innovative prototypes in just three days, with the aim of deploying the use of generative AI within their company. The result is nothing short of remarkable. In just a few days, we covered ground that usually takes six months!”
Jérôme Petit, Managing Partner at Artefact

The hackathon experience: Teams coming together to create impactful business solutions.

Ardian’s AI hackathon immersed its employees in the world of artificial intelligence, helping them envision, design and develop innovative solutions tailored to the financial sector.

Participating employees will continue to explore how their ideas and the potential of AI can shape the future of their field. Ardian has observed promising use cases, including improving project management, financial processes and investment strategies.

“This event reflects the spirit of innovation at Ardian. The goal here was to strengthen our skills and to position Ardian as a pioneer in AI in its sector, in an ever-evolving world, while developing the group’s strategic vision. I therefore commend each participant for their commitment to this challenge. It is through such initiatives that Ardian will remain at the forefront of innovation, competitiveness, and excellence.”
Mathias Burghardt, Executive Vice-President of Ardian, CEO of Ardian France, Head of Infrastructure
“The Ardian Startup Studio, an AI hackathon, demonstrates the capacity for innovation and the development of new activities made possible by our generative AI offerings and infrastructure. It not only illustrates the excitement around AI but also the enthusiasm for combining ideas, skills, and technologies. We are delighted to have partnered with a trusted and experienced entity like Artefact and look forward to seeing how these collaborations can turn the projects from these three days into real successes.”
Philippe Limantour, Chief Technology and CyberSecurity Officer at Microsoft France