Debut Secures $20M to Revolutionize Longevity Skin Care with AI, Expands into Asia

Biotech beauty upstart Debut has gained $20 million in investment from Fine Structure Ventures, EDBI, Wealthberry, BOLD (the venture fund of L'Oréal), GS Futures, Sandbox Industries and Material Impact, among others, to accelerate the expansion of BeautyORB, its AI-based ingredient discovery platform, to accelerate and scale skin longevity innovation in the United States and Asia.

The move comes amid a revolution in longevity-focused beauty innovation.

The AI discovery platform will use the funding to develop ingredients that target the 14 hallmarks of aging that can be incorporated into brands' formulations and fuel novel claims.

The AI platform reportedly possesses in-house skin health data sets that are larger than publicly available resources. The result is 99% data consistency, versus the 85% offered by public data sates, Debut claims.

"This means we can predict better ingredients, faster, with our best-in-class models that we have invested in over several years," says Joshua Britton, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Debut. "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 platform is said to allow brands of every scale to tap into the latest biotech breakthroughs by outsourcing formulation responsibilities and sidestepping costly upfront R&D expenses.

Debut's expansion into the Asian market, starting with Singapore, is a logical one, given the region's preference for high-performance, cutting-edge skin care. 

Britton notes, "AI, combined with an understanding of skin biology, enables the creation of custom formulation solutions for different geographies that has previously not been possible."

He adds, "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 Britton. "This funding will enhance our ability to screen upward of 50 billion ingredients to explore the 99.999 percent of unknown molecules that can optimize skin health and make skin longevity a reality."