L’Oréal has announced a strategic partnership with Verily, the health branch of US tech conglomerate Alphabet, to advance skin health.
The team-up is expected to entail two programmes aimed at better understanding and characterising skin and hair ageing mechanisms and informing L’Oréal’s beauty tech strategy and product development.
The first programme is a research collaboration, leveraging the beauty giant’s knowledge of the skin and Verily’s clinical science expertise, to decode and discover the links between exposome, skin ageing and deep biology of the skin.
The second, meanwhile, will see Verily’s R&D team link with L’Oréal’s Active Cosmetics Division to explore the development of new technologies and tele-diagnosis solutions, such as sensors and AI algorithms for dermatology and skin care, to form the basis of new services.
“We are excited to partner with Verily, a world leader in precision health tech,” said Nicolas Hieronimus, L’Oréal Group’s CEO.
“L’Oréal’s century-long commitment to pioneering innovation has come from our strong belief in the intersection between science, formulations and our unique advanced research capabilities to decode revolutionary scientific discoveries that will create the future of beauty.
“Thanks to this partnership, we want to lead a new era of skin health, through tech and science, to enable every person around the world the most inclusive, personalised, powerful and precise programmes for their skin at each stage of their lives.”
"We recognise skin health as a critical need for overall wellness as it not only impacts us physically in our daily lives, but also holistically,” commented Brian Otis, who co-founded Verily with Stephen Gillett.
“Our collective approach has the potential to identify the right intervention based on data, powered by Verily's technology and clinical science abilities combined with L’Oréal’s beauty industry leading intelligence and dermatology network."
L’Oréal has a strong track record of linking with companies to help boost strategy and product creation. Last year, it acquired a majority stake in Swiss environmental tech start-up Gjosa with an eye to developing water-saving shampoo solutions.