L’Oréal has announced it has acquired 100% of the Canadian company ModiFace, an internationally recognized leader in augmented reality and artificial intelligence applied to the beauty industry.

ModiFace will be part of L’Oréal’s Digital Services Factory, a dedicated network to design and develop new digital services for the group’s brands. The company will work in close collaboration with L’Oréal’s Advanced Research, and benefit from an unrivaled century-old expertise in beauty.

The acquisition is in line with L’Oréal’s digital acceleration strategy to provide the group’s 34 international brands with the most innovative technologies.

Lubomira Rochet, chief digital officer of L’Oréal, says, “We are thrilled to welcome ModiFace to L’Oréal to become the heart of our digital services R&D. With its world-class team, technologies and sustained track record in beauty tech innovations, ModiFace will support the reinvention of the beauty experience around innovative services to help our customers discover, try and chose products and brands. We at L’Oréal and ModiFace want to pioneer this new page of the beauty industry and serve our customers with innovative services and experiences.”

Parham Aarabi, founder/CEO, adds, “L’Oréal’s acquisition of ModiFace provides an incredible opportunity to innovate on beauty augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) at an unprecedented scale, the results of which will shape the beauty industry for the decades to come. Our entire team and I are extremely excited to be joining the L’Oréal family, and look forward to the AR/AI-enabled future that we will create together.”

ModiFace will remain based in Toronto close to the University with which it has established many research partnerships.

Advanced Technologies

Modiface, which was founded by Parham Aarabi eleven years ago, has developed advanced technologies of 3D virtual make-up, color and skin diagnosis services that nearly every major brand has used — including this recent partnership with Benefit Cosmetics.

What sets the company apart is proprietary know-how to track facial features and color. ModiFace employs nearly 70 engineers, researchers, and scientists who have submitted more than 200 scientific publications and registered over thirty patents.