OliX Pharmaceuticals has secured approximately KRW 110 billion (about $80 million) in new funding from strategic investors, including BOLD, the corporate venture capital arm of L'Oréal, and U.S.-based Weiss Asset Management. The investment highlights a growing trend among beauty companies seeking access to technologies traditionally associated with pharmaceutical drug development.
(Previous investments from BOLD this year include Live Tinted and body care brand Hanni.)
At the center of the deal is OliX's RNA interference (RNAi) platform, a gene-silencing technology designed to regulate disease-causing gene expression. While RNAi has long been viewed through the lens of therapeutics, the partnership signals increasing interest in applying advanced biological technologies to skin and hair concerns that sit at the intersection of wellness, longevity, and aesthetics.
The funding will support OliX's pipeline across multiple therapeutic categories, including projects focused on skin and hair applications. The company is currently developing RNAi candidates for hair loss, hypertrophic scars, metabolic disorders and other conditions, leveraging its proprietary OASIS delivery platform.
For L'Oréal, the investment represents another step in its push toward what it calls "augmented beauty," combining biology, technology, and formulation science to create next-generation consumer solutions.
"We are convinced that together we'll accelerate in creating the future of beauty for the benefit of consumers globally with new levels of performance backed by advanced biology and robust scientific proof," said Guive Balooch, global managing director of Open Innovation and Augmented Beauty at L'Oréal.
The investment underscores how beauty companies are increasingly looking beyond traditional cosmetic ingredients and toward platforms emerging from biotechnology, precision medicine, and molecular biology. Technologies once developed to treat disease are now attracting attention for their potential to address hair growth, skin aging, pigmentation, inflammation, and other appearance-related concerns through highly targeted biological mechanisms.
