$34 Million Funding
Debut, a vertically integrated synthetic biology company, is leading the way in creating innovative and high-performing active ingredients in the beauty industry.
They have announced raising $34 million in Series B funding, with BOLD, the venture capital fund of L'Oréal, the global beauty leader, taking the lead in the funding round.
Other investors participating in the funding round include Fine Structure Ventures, Material Impact, GS Futures, Cavallo Ventures, Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, ACVC Partners, and others.
Through a strategic partnership with L'Oréal's venture capital fund BOLD, Debut aims to develop a wide range of novel ingredients and beauty products using its proprietary cell-free and biotechnology model. The goal is to accelerate the commercialization of this technology across the entire
beauty industry.
Debut is the only player in the biotech field with complete vertical integration capabilities, encompassing ingredient discovery, clinically-backed scalable ingredients, and brands available on store shelves, all delivered at an unprecedented speed. The Series B financing and partnership with BOLD will provide Debut with the necessary resources to establish a new benchmark in the industry.
Joshua Britton, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Debut, stated, "Debut exists to set a new standard in beauty by developing novel active ingredients that bring about a new era in terms of performance, sustainability, scalability, and cost. We are thrilled to partner with L'Oréal's BOLD, a beauty world leader that shares our commitment to the future of this industry.
Every day, we leverage our team's groundbreaking technology, scientific research, and limitless creativity to lead the biological revolution that will transform beauty as we know it. We utilize synthetic biology to create novel and higher-performing ingredients that are not accessible through other means, in order to advance product benefits and address unmet consumer needs."
Barbara Lavernos, Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of Research, Innovation and Technology at L'Oréal, commented, "Debut tackles one of the fundamental challenges in the beauty world: driving innovation without the resource intensity and environmental impact associated with traditional manufacturing alone.
Cell-free biomanufacturing is not science fiction; it is here. We are incredibly excited to be the first beauty leader to invest in Debut and partner with them to create standout active beauty innovations while protecting the planet's resources."
Debut's proprietary Bio2Consumer™ platform covers ingredient discovery, cell-free production, biofermentation, formulation, clinical trials, and brand creation. The platform utilizes cell-free and advanced fermentation approaches, such as continuous biomanufacturing, to overcome the limitations of traditional methods, significantly reducing the need for space, water, and expensive and unsustainable inputs.
In addition to producing rare, high-value, and novel compounds, Debut's technology also improves traditional ingredient manufacturing. The platform incorporates a proprietary database of over 3.8 million pre-clinical data points to discover new ingredients that address beauty consumer needs. By overcoming the limitations of cell-based fermentation, Debut can rapidly and sustainably produce high-value ingredients.
Debut's portfolio consists of both natural and lab-made ingredients, combining the best of both worlds while protecting the environment from resource extraction. The inputs used by Debut in the biomanufacturing process are found in nature, and the enzymes used to catalyze the transformation to high-value natural products are also sourced from nature.
Britton explained, "Science allows us to understand how nature creates these molecules and then translate that knowledge into an industrially scalable system to produce the exact same molecules found in trace amounts in nature using synthetic biology."
Debut's previous Series A funding round in August 2021, led by Material Impact, helped scale their unique ingredient development model, establish an in-house brand incubator, and expand their facility in San Diego to
26,000 square feet.
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