Debut has landed US$20m to accelerate the expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI)-based ingredient discovery platform to advance innovation in skin longevity.
The biotech beauty company will use the investment to “propel” the discovery of next-generation ingredients and formulations that target the 14 hallmarks of ageing.
It is also looking to scale its formulation business in the US and Asia.
The recent fundraising round was supported by BOLD (the venture fund of L'Oréal), Fine Structure Ventures, EDBI and Wealthberry.
Plus, GS Futures, Sandbox Industries and Material Impact, among others.
"Debut is laser-focused on staying at the forefront of skin care innovation and bringing cutting-edge biotech to every beauty brand with the highest-performing and most differentiated ingredients,” said Joshua Britton, founder and CEO of Debut.
“This funding will enhance our ability to screen upward of 50 billion ingredients to explore the 99.999% of unknown molecules that can optimise skin health and make skin longevity a reality."
Many beauty players are now entering the longevity space in a bid to get ahead of the competition, including L’Oréal, OneSkin, Lancôme and Martha Stewart’s new brand Elm Biosciences.
Debut claims the funding will enable beauty brands, at all stages of growth, to outsource their formulation innovation at scale and without the heavy upfront R&D expense.
The predictive capabilities of the company’s proprietary, in-house skin health datasets recently surpassed publicly available datasets, achieving 99% data consistency compared to 85% in public datasets.
"This means we can predict better ingredients, faster, with our best-in-class models that we have invested in over several years,” said Britton.
“We are excited to go after novel chemical entities (NCEs), as opposed to chasing existing ingredients in nature, to pioneer skin health innovation and support the growth of beauty brands."
Debut’s expansion into Asia will begin in Singapore, where it will partner with brands to create custom ingredients and formulations for longevity skin care.
"AI combined with an understanding of skin biology enables the creation of custom formulation solutions for different geographies that has previously not been possible," said Britton.
Image credit: Mark Wall, Debut
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