This article is part of “The Future of AI,” a series exploring how artificial intelligence will shape the fashion and beauty industries.
The beauty sector has been the quickest area of luxury to embrace AI. As the technology rapidly advances, major beauty companies are competing to harness its potential. Recently, L’Oréal and chipmaker Nvidia expanded their AI partnership for beauty research and development. Estée Lauder Companies partnered with AI startup Rezolve AI to enhance its brand websites for search and discovery across 70 markets in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Meanwhile, LVMH announced plans to deepen its collaboration with Google for its fashion and beauty businesses, which includes its branded AI chatbot, MaIA.
AI companies focused on beauty are attracting clients of all sizes, promising growth that was once difficult to achieve. Here are four emerging AI firms—backed by major beauty players—that are shaping the industry’s future.
Debut
Founder: Joshua Britton
Funding to date: $80 million
Key investors: L’Oréal’s venture fund Bold, Material Impact, Fine Structure Ventures, and GS Futures
In beauty, AI is all about speed. At Debut, Joshua Britton has created a platform that combines AI with genomics, biotechnology, and data to compress years of research and development into months. This enables the creation of entirely new, high-performance ingredients without relying solely on chemists. The technology gathers formulas and data to develop new ingredients, testing them based on studies collected from brands and labs.
“By accelerating millions of years of evolution, we can design targeted ingredients with clinically validated performance in emerging areas of skin science,” says Britton, founder and CEO of Debut, which launched in 2019 with a focus on biotechnology in beauty. The company works with L’Oréal’s portfolio, Image Skincare, and Formula Fig, an aesthetic treatment clinic and retailer.
In January, Debut launched Dermceutical EDL, a topical bioactive ingredient that delivers professional-grade skin tightening effects similar to Botox. EDL works by activating the cellular pathways targeted by clinical procedures, stimulating dermal fibroblasts to boost elastin production. This results in clinically proven improvements in skin tightness and firmness.
Britton predicts that AI in beauty will become increasingly performance-driven, with innovations in biotechnology blurring the lines between beauty, pharmaceuticals, and nutrition. “The current set of active ingredients will be replaced by molecules with yet-to-be-imagined functionalities,” he says. “Their names may be unfamiliar today, but their outstanding scientific performance and beauty claims will quickly establish their dominance, all validated by clinical testing.”
Looking ahead, Britton believes his company will expand into related industries like food, beverage, and performance nutrition. “In this industrial revolution, we’re not turning to nature to discover a new plant, nor waiting for a chemist to invent something,” he says.
Haut.AI
Founders: Anastasia Georgievskaya and Konstantin Kiselev
Funding to date: $2.8 million
Key investors: Ulta Beauty’s venture capital firm LongeVC, Grupo Boticário, and Prisma Ventures
Haut.AI co-founder Anastasia Georgievskaya is a trained scientist with a degree in biophysics. She began her career in drug discovery before moving into cosmetic manufacturing and testing. “While analyzing clinical studies, it became clear that skincare products do work, but for some reason, consumers often think they don’t,” says Georgievskaya. “The reason is that we don’t all experience the same effects from a product.”
Haut.AI’s technology analyzes skin health and recommends products based on that analysis. Through this platform, Georgievskaya aims to make personalized skincare routines accessible to consumers via their mobile devices.Haut.AI has also expanded into hair analysis, marking a new category for its AI tool. The company’s technology is already used by several beauty brands, such as Neutrogena, Beiersdorf, Clarins, Grupo Boticário, and Ulta Beauty. At Ulta Beauty, the AI powers an app that supports a beauty loyalty program with over 44 million members. Recently, Haut.AI began collaborating with the health company Noom, which combines GLP-1 medication with a personalized program called Future Me. Through Haut.AI, users can access the SkinGPT engine to visualize how their skin may change over time with different products and lifestyle choices.
As AI becomes more widespread, Haut.AI has focused on integrating legal safeguards and data security. CEO Anastasia Georgievskaya’s Skin Atlas, developed in 2021, uses clinical data to simulate treatment outcomes. “We remove all identifiable details from user photos and convert them into an AI-generated texture that contains skin information, without storing any private or identifying data,” she explains. Beyond privacy, this approach also helps optimize facial recognition for AI.
Georgievskaya predicts that the beauty and pharmaceutical industries will increasingly merge, with AI designing new ingredients. “We may see products that offer gradual facelift effects over time. In skincare, we could modify facial features within four to eight weeks,” she says.
Daash
Founders: Philip Smolin, Melissa Munnerlyn, and Justin Stewart
Funding to date: $11 million
Key investors: Silicon Road Ventures, Bullpen Capital, GFT Ventures, and Red Bike Capital
When Daash launched as an AI-powered beauty insights platform, its goal was to educate and support businesses in the early stages of their go-to-market journey. “Major strategic decisions should be more data-driven, as the beauty industry is highly competitive, and existing intelligence tools are often designed for large conglomerates,” says co-founder Philip Smolin.
Daash uses an alternative data methodology, gathering information from licensed consumer research panels and augmenting it with publicly available data from brands, retailers, and collaborators. This data is processed through Daash’s AI system to generate reports on consumer patterns, in-store sales, and online product interactions. Brands test these estimates and provide feedback, allowing Daash to refine accuracy for each category. “The platform becomes smarter over time as it processes more data and works with more brands—we’re training it to improve precision,” Smolin explains. The reports offer detailed insights into how a product or brand performs within its category and against competitors.
Smolin believes the future of beauty will prioritize speed, with traditional product development cycles shrinking to weeks. While novel chemistries may take longer due to testing, reformulations that combine existing ingredients are expected to accelerate significantly.
In the multi-product, multinational beauty industry, being data-driven will be essential for success. “Combining innovation with personalization, brand identity, and speed creates a winning formula,” says Smolin. However, he emphasizes that “human vision” will remain a key differentiator in an AI-driven future.
Noli
Founders: Amos Susskind and Maëlle Gasc
Funding to date: Undisclosed
Key investors: L’Oréal Group
Noli, an AI-powered platform backed by L’Oréal Group, matches users with products based on their skin and hair types after they upload images via the website or mobile app. The platform is still in its early stages and is working with…Noli offers 20 L’Oréal brands such as Cerave, La Roche-Posay, Kiehl’s, Aesop, and Lancôme, along with the non-L’Oréal brand Doré.
The platform’s AI is powered by L’Oréal’s own research and data, rather than scouring the wider internet. According to Chief Marketing Officer Firdaous El Honsali, who joined from Unilever, the goal is not to sell more products, but to sell the right ones. The AI advisor is continuously updated, and Noli will soon launch a tool to help users create personalized skincare routines.
The company plans to expand beyond skincare into categories like makeup and haircare. El Honsali believes AI will become ubiquitous, aiding both product development and consumer decisions, but emphasizes that “the touch of magic will always be coming from the humans behind this incredible industry.”
Many in the field predict AI’s greatest impact will be accelerating formulations, testing, and product launches. Yet they caution that human oversight remains essential to ground these innovations in reality.
AI is also proving to be a lucrative area within beauty. Tech firms are securing millions in funding from large conglomerates more quickly and easily than many established beauty brands, driven by consumer demand for constant innovation. “Consumers are extraordinarily demanding,” says Lilac Watt, principal at venture capital firm Venrex. “They want personalization that feels genuine, not gimmicky, and they will abandon a brand the moment the technology feels like a parlour trick.” She notes that successful startups are “building something genuinely difficult: AI that earns trust.”
Over the past two years, AI in beauty has evolved beyond e-commerce and virtual try-ons, now focusing on streamlining industry operations. The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC), for example, has been expanding its AI experiments. In late 2025, its brand Jo Malone London launched an AI scent advisor, powered by Google’s Gemini and Vertex platforms, to guide online customers through a conversational fragrance-buying journey.
LVMH has also embraced AI broadly. Since a 2021 deal with Google Cloud to enhance demand forecasting, personalization, and IT security, the group increased its AI initiatives in 2025 to counter a luxury slowdown, applying the technology to supply chain planning, pricing, design, and marketing.
Watt observes that the most promising companies are “building proprietary data assets, skin biomarker libraries, formulation models, and diagnostic engines.” As these firms refine their ability to shape trends, develop new ingredients, and advance technologies, they are positioning themselves to potentially rival the industry’s giants.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about AI startups transforming the beauty industry designed to sound like questions from real customers and industry observers
Beginner General Questions
1 What does AI in beauty even mean
It means companies are using artificial intelligence to analyze your skin hair or facial features and provide personalized product recommendations virtual tryons or customblended formulas
2 Whats the main benefit for me as a customer
The biggest benefit is personalization Instead of guessing what foundation shade or skincare product will work AI can analyze your unique needs to find your perfect match reducing waste and failed purchases
3 Is it accurate Can I really trust a computer to recommend my skincare
Its highly accurate for specific tasks like shade matching and analyzing visible skin concerns However its a tool not a doctor For medical conditions like severe acne or rosacea you should still consult a dermatologist
4 Do I need special equipment to use these services
Usually not Most startups use the camera on your smartphone for analysis or your computers webcam for virtual tryons Some advanced instore devices might use special scanners for deeper skin analysis
5 Can I try makeup on virtually before buying it online
Yes This is one of the most popular uses AIpowered virtual tryon lets you see how different shades of lipstick eyeshadow or foundation look on your own live video or photo
Advanced Detailed Questions
6 Beyond virtual tryons what are the more innovative things AI beauty startups are doing
Theyre moving into hyperpersonalization This includes
Custom Formula Creation Startups like Proven or Atolla use AI to analyze your skin and environment to create skincare products blended uniquely for you
Skin Forecasting Analyzing how your skin might change with seasons stress or age and adjusting routines proactively
Supply Chain Sustainability AI helps brands predict trends and manufacture more precisely reducing overproduction and waste
7 What are some specific examples of leading AI beauty startups