Debut Secures $34 Million in Financing

Debut Raises USD 34 Million in Funding Debut announced it has raised investment in a USD 34 million Series B funding round led by BOLD, L'Oréal's venture capital fund. Additional participating investors include Fine Structure Ventures, Material Impact, GS Futures, Cavallo Ventures, Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, ACVC Partners and others. Within the framework of a strategic partnership with L'Oréal's venture capital fund BOLD, Debut will develop various new active ingredients and beauty and personal care products using its proprietary cell-free and biotechnology model, and aims to accelerate the commercialization of this technology across the beauty industry. Debut is a leading biotechnology firm with capabilities in ingredient discovery, completion of clinically-supported scalable components and full vertical integration encompassing all brands on shelves, delivering these at an unprecedented pace. Series B funding and the partnership with BOLD will enable Debut to rapidly establish this new industry standard. Joshua Britton, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Debut, stated: "Debut exists to set a new standard in beauty by developing new active ingredients that mark a new era in terms of performance, sustainability, scalability and cost. We are thrilled to partner with BOLD and L'Oréal, a global beauty leader investing in the future of this sector as much as we are." "Every day, using our team's groundbreaking technology, scientific research and boundless creativity, we are leading a biological revolution that will transform the beauty we know. Using synthetic biology, we create new and more effective active ingredients unreachable by other methods, enhance product benefits and focus on unmet consumer needs." Barbara Lavernos, Senior Vice President, Research, Innovation and Technology at L'Oréal, said: "Debut addresses one of the fundamental challenges in the beauty world—innovating with resource intensity and environmental impact without dependence on traditional production methods." "Cell-free biotechnology is not science fiction, it is reality. Investing in Debut and working with them could not be more exciting than taking the first step as a beauty leader in creating visible effective beauty innovations while protecting the planet's resources." Debut's patented Bio2Consumer™ platform encompasses ingredient discovery, cell-free production, biofermentation, formulation, clinical trials and brand building. The platform uses cell-free and advanced fermentation approaches to overcome the limitations of traditional methods, significantly reducing space requirements, water and expensive and unsustainable inputs. Debut's technology, in addition to producing rare, high-value and novel compounds, also improves traditional ingredient production. The platform uses a proprietary database containing more than 3.8 million preclinical data points to discover and identify new ingredients that will meet beauty consumer needs. By overcoming the limitations of cell-based fermentation, Debut can produce high-value ingredients faster and more sustainably. Ingredients in Debut's portfolio are both natural and laboratory-produced and protect the environment from the extraction of natural resources. Debut's inputs in the biotechnology production process are found in nature. The enzymes used to catalyze the conversion to high-value natural products are also found in nature. Britton said: "What science offers us is the ability to understand how nature does it and use synthetic biology to supply at industrial scale the exact same molecules isolated in nature." Debut's August 2021 Series A funding round of USD 22.6 million, led by Material Impact, helped scale its unique and unprecedented ingredient development model, establish its own brand incubator and grow its 26,000 square meter facility in San Diego. Source