Skin Care Brand Revea Closes $6 Million Seed Round

Skin care newcomer Revea has closed a funding round.

The company, which creates personalized skin care using artificial intelligence and hyperspectral imaging, has closed a second round of seed funding, to the tune of $6 million. It was founded in 2019.

Alpha Edison led the round, with participants also including retailer Ulta Beauty, Waldencast Ventures, GISEV and Verlinvest, among others.

Revea’s technology is available at a brick-and-mortar location in San Francisco, where consumers can have their skin evaluated for customized skin care. With the recent infusion, though, Revea will be offering a similar diagnostic via consumers’ phones that is in beta testing, said Chaz Giles, the company’s cofounder and chief executive officer.

“We opened brick-and-mortar in March 2020, and decided the most scalable way to do this is to reach consumers via their phones,” Giles said. “We’ve built on some very high-end AI network technology that allows us to take hyperspectral imaging, and turn the image from a phone camera into a three-dimensional, hyperspectral cube from which we infer biology.”

As the business scales, Giles said he intends to make the technology accessible to other beauty brands and retailers. “We know that by opening this platform and enabling the rest of the industry, we can propel skin care forward into what we think the future of skin care should really be, which is rooted in science and driven by data,” he said.

Giles started the business with Revea’s own in-house brand in order to “go at your own speed and have control,” he said. “But we see ourselves, at our core, as a data and technology company.…Many large brands have reached out to us in early conversations to understand the technology, and how they can leverage it.”

Giles declined to comment on sales, although industry sources think the brand could reach between $3 million and $7 million in revenues in 2022.

Investors also seemed bullish on the technology, as well as its future applications. “Ulta Beauty was founded to disrupt the status quo and today, we remain focused on doing just that across every touchpoint — with greater personalization than ever before,” Prama Bhatt, chief digital officer at Ulta, said in a statement regarding the investment. “We are thrilled to support Revea as they continue to disrupt and deliver unique, personalized skin care solutions.”

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Source: WWD