The Very Group hosts artificial intelligence immersion day as online retailer shows off new GenAI chatbot

Multi-brand online retailer, The Very Group, this week brought the entire company together for an event entitled, Very Con: AI in Action.

In a LinkedIn post, Matt Grest, CIO at The Very Group, said: “It’s always going to be a big call to bring the whole company together for an AI immersion day, but as a business we have made huge strides over the last 12 months in powering the business using genuine AI and I really wanted to keep up the momentum and bring more colleagues into the fold.”

He added: “We had a fantastic day where we were able to outline our strategic ambitions, we had colleagues demonstrating how we’re already leveraging genuine AI across the business and saw many great demonstrations from our valued partners in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Samsung Electronics, Meta and Multiverse - great energy in the office all day from everyone.”

The big reveal of the day was the launch of VeryGPT, a generative AI chatBot that will be available to all employees.

Grest said: “This gives everyone access to a new tool that they can use to support their daily activities, in a safe and secure environment with appropriate guardrails.”

“We’ve already been able to demonstrate some amazing productivity gains from colleagues using VeryGPT during our internal trial, and I can’t wait to see what colleagues are going to do with this now that it’s rolled out to all.”

Investment and half year results

The Very Group, which is owned by the billionaire Barclay family, recently secured a £125 million investment.

It received around £85 million from global investment firm Carlyle while the rest was provided by IMI to “support its growth strategy”. As part of the agreement, Carlyle and IMI will each take a seat on the group’s board.

The Very Group, which includes Littlewoods, also recently posted its half year results for the six months to 30th December 2023. Revenue increased from £1.219 billion to £1.226 billion while it went from making a pre-tax profit of £2.1 million to a loss of £2 million.

In the UK, The Very Group’s revenue went up from £1.029 billion to £1.058 billion but Littlewoods’ sales fell from £147.3 million to £128.9 million. Very Ireland’s revenue decreased from £42 million to £39.6 million.