L’Oréal North Asia Big Bang is building the future of the beauty ecosystem

At the eighth China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, L’Oréal North Asia’s Big Bang Beauty Tech Open Innovation Program returned for its fifth edition — less as a corporate showcase and more as a barometer of where beauty is heading in North Asia and beyond. In 2025, two ideas become newly decisive. First, AI is no longer being introduced as an innovation category; rather, it quietly undergirds every stage of the beauty value chain, from molecular simulation and ingredient discovery to adaptive packaging, immersive retail, and brand storytelling. Second, sustainability has moved from a communication territory into the physical materiality of products, with a dedicated Sustainability track — newly introduced this year — placed on equal footing with Future Science, Phygital Consumers Experience, and Operation 4.0. The Big Bang journey: From China pilot to North Asia powerhouse What began in 2020 as a China-based open-innovation pilot has evolved into a North Asia-wide collaboration architecture that redefines how beauty products are conceived, produced, marketed, and experienced. “L’Oréal is born from science, and innovation is the core power engine of every single product, experience, and service we put on the market,” says Dhimoy Roy, vice president of L’Oréal Research & Innovation North Asia. “As the beauty leader, we want to build the most powerful ecosystem of partners in the industry to create, all together, the Beauty that Moves the World. The future of beauty is not just about groundbreaking products or experiences; it’s about groundbreaking collaborations.” Roy describes L’Oréal’s Big Bang initiative as “the heart of our open innovation strategy in North Asia,” designed to connect the group with dynamic startups, foster cross-industry partnerships, and accelerate disruptive solution development. “North Asia forms a ‘Beauty Triangle,’” he adds, “leveraging Korea’s trendsetting creativity, China’s advances in AI and biotech, and Japan’s scientific precision — a combination that drives innovation at speed and scale.” 2023 marked the first major turning point, when Big Bang expanded across North Asia and placed research and ingredients at the core of its collaboration agenda, signaling a longer-term view of science as the industry’s true competitive edge. In 2024, a digital and phygital track was added through the inclusion of Hong Kong S.A.R. and Taiwan region. Since its inception, more than 2,500 startups have participated, over 80 co-development pilots have been executed, and around 40 solutions have moved into commercial or operational use. This year’s edition drew over 700 applications, narrowed to 19 winners across four tracks. The future is regional, but not uniform The most striking aspect of this year’s showcase is how clearly each market expresses its own innovation personality, shaped by culture, industry structure, and consumer behavior — yet still connected within a shared North Asia framework. China, home to the world’s most accelerated supply chain and social content ecosystem, presented solutions aimed at scaling and system-building. Rightway’s carbon-negative packaging normalizes sustainability as standard practice, while VIDU’s multimodal AI platform captures the pace and precision of China’s content economy. HeSheng Tech and Deep Principle are compressing ingredient discovery cycles through AI chemistry and synthetic biology. Startups such as Fangxingwei and Xense Robotics are advancing automation and smart packaging, signaling L’Oréal’s move toward an AI-optimized supply chain. Japan’s Matlantis accelerates molecular simulations up to 80 million times faster than traditional methods, while ZEALS humanizes e-commerce through conversational AI, reflecting Japan’s focus on emotional intelligence in service design. South Korea presented a vision where bio-circularity and sensory experience converge through REPLA’s enzymatic plastic recycling and Stemon and BioNT’s digital cell reprogramming and biodegradable filler science. Soojib experiments at the edges of fragrance personalization — a category notoriously difficult to digitize. Taiwan region contributed a radically intuitive view of retail. Speed 3D fuses phygital retail with entertainment via AI-powered beauty vending, while Hong Kong S.A.R.’s Black Barrels expands the reach of GenAI-driven visual storytelling. France, meanwhile, grounds the ecosystem in sustainable performance science. Greez — an e-commerce platform dedicated to upcycling anti-waste cosmetics — gives unsold, returned, or near-expiry beauty and wellness products a second life through weekly curated sales or safe, traceable recycling of both formulas and packaging. Its model directly supports a more circular, lower-waste beauty economy. Science accelerated: 20 years of R&I in China This year also marks the 20th anniversary of L’Oréal’s R&I Center in China — now a pivotal node in the company’s global science network. Over two decades, Shanghai has evolved from a manufacturing base to a regional hub for biotech, green chemistry, and AI-enabled discovery. Big Bang has helped L’Oréal deepen its R&I collaboration in China, giving it access to extraordinary agility in science and technology. Recent collaborations exemplify this shift. In 2023, L’Oréal made a minority investment in Chinese biotech firm Shinehigh Innovation, its first open innovation investment in the market, bringing supramolecular technology to scale. By 2025, multiple supramolecular-based products — including L’Oréal Paris’ Supramolecular Liposome RHC Cream and La Roche-Posay’s new line — have launched in China. This year, through Shanghai Meicifang Investment, L’Oréal also announced a minority investment in biotech startup Veminsyn, another former Big Bang winner, to co-develop bioactives and low-carbon biomanufacturing ingredients. Other partnerships have reached global markets. “Partnering with Chinese startup Nanomed, a 2020 Big Bang winner,” Roy notes, “we launched Lancôme’s Rénergie Nano-Resurfacer 400 Booster, which has been recognized as TIME Best Inventions of 2025.” Smart operations and sustainable supply chains Behind the beauty-tech breakthroughs, Big Bang is quietly reshaping how L’Oréal operates end-to-end. From robotics and automation to waste recycling and smart packaging, the Operations track reflects a broader transformation toward intelligent, localized, and sustainable supply chains. “At L'Oréal, our very foundation is rooted in science, and innovation isn't just a buzzword,” said Barbara Lavernos, L’Oréal Group Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of Research, Innovation and Technology. “We wholeheartedly believe in the extraordinary power of open innovation. For us, Big Bang serves as the crucial bridge — connecting us with dynamic startups, fostering cross-industry collaboration, and fast-tracking the development of truly disruptive solutions. We firmly believe that the future of beauty isn’t solely about groundbreaking products, it’s fundamentally about groundbreaking collaborations.” Since 2020, more than 630 startups have participated in the Operations 4.0 Track, with eight projects piloted across L’Oréal’s regional facilities. For instance, Mech Mind, a 2020 Big Bang winner whose visual detection solution has been deployed at L’Oréal’s Suzhou Smart Fulfillment Center, improving B2B order efficiency, and Yuanyi Environment, a 2023 winner whose recycling technology now enables 100% reuse of non-salable goods in L’Oréal China. On November 6, L’Oréal hosted the 2025 Big Bang Awarding Ceremony and Innovation Summit on the main stage of the CIIE Innovation Incubation Zone, bringing together over 100 startup founders, ecosystem partners, and government representatives from across North Asia. Distinguished guests — including Barbara Lavernos, L’Oréal Group Deputy CEO in charge of Research, Innovation and Technology — joined officials from France, Japan, and China to celebrate this year’s 19 winning startups. A cross-border roundtable featuring Deep Principle, Rightway, REPLA, and ZEALS explored how AI-driven materials science, carbon-negative packaging, enzymatic recycling, and humanized voice AI are reshaping beauty tech. Their discussion highlighted how technology and sensorial beauty experiences increasingly converge, reinforcing Big Bang’s role as a platform for open co-creation. CIIE as cultural space: Beauty, identity, and longevity in practice What distinguishes L’Oréal’s presence at CIIE this year is the integration of technology and culture. The exhibition journey explores how beauty is researched, interpreted, and lived across time and identity. “Essentiality of Beauty” encourages visitors to create their own aesthetic narratives, treating beauty as a form of inquiry rather than acquisition. “The Beauty of Longevity” reframes aging as a process of renewal, grounded in science and well-being. “Beauty of the Five Senses” translates R&I into a tactile experience, while the R&I Center’s 20-year retrospective highlights Shanghai’s evolution from a manufacturing base into a scientific hub. Finally, the “Shared Beauty” zone, where Big Bang winners are displayed, connects cultural experience with technological experimentation. A dynamic wall of AIGC-generated visuals and shoppable media illustrates how ideas move from lab to market — proving that breakthroughs happen through collaboration, not isolation. An innovation framework still in formation The 2025 Big Bang cohort does not represent a finished vision of the future of beauty in North Asia. Instead, it offers a view of a region where scientific research capacity, cultural aesthetics, and digital commerce architectures are developing in parallel, and where sustainability is beginning to shift from aspiration to practice. The program’s significance lies less in any single technology and more in the infrastructure it builds: an open, distributed innovation model that links startups, research institutes, and industrial partners across the region. With more than 2,200 participants since 2020 and 60-plus projects commercialized, Big Bang has matured from experiment to ecosystem. As North Asia continues to define itself not just as a consumer powerhouse but as a producer of new beauty standards, L’Oréal’s Big Bang stands as proof that the future of beauty will not be invented in isolation. Increasingly, it’s being co-authored across a network stretching from Seoul’s digital studios to Shanghai’s biotech corridors.

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L’Oréal North Asia Big Bang is building the future of the beauty ecosystem