U.K.-based Renude launched in 2020 as an AI service for customers looking for personalized, dermatology-led skin care. After 100,000 signups and an Innovate U.K. grant for R&D, the company is now building up a B2B offering, as well as launching an AI skin-care natural language chat service later this year.
The company launched by offering dermatology-focused AI skin-care analysis services, both to fill in for the lack of dermatologists in the U.K and to combat misleading skin-care information on public forums. It markets the services through social media and press. The company declined to disclose its revenue.
“If you’ve got mild to moderate acne, you’re basically not going to get referred [to a dermatologist by your doctor] in the U.K,” said Renude co-founder Pippa Harman, who formerly worked for Beauty Pie, Illamasqua and the U.K. beauty retailer Boots. There are just 626 consultant dermatologists in the U.K., according to Statista. But, as of 2006, 24% of the population were visiting their general practitioner with skin complaints every year, equating to 13 million annual appointments.
“If you’ve got severe acne, you may be [prescribed an appointment], but even then, you’re waiting 18 weeks to get your first appointment,” she said. “So people are deciding to self-manage with skin care, but that’s a hugely complex and challenging area.”
Renude’s AI picture analysis is providing a solution. “AI is amazing at visual recognition tasks,” said Renude co-founder Cate Nisson, who previously created AI news misinformation tools used by NATO and Joe Biden’s administration. Nisson pointed to a study from 2019, where 157 dermatologists assessed melanomas — AI outperformed all of them in determining which were cancerous.
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“You can audit [AI] and understand where it’s not performing well and help it to perform better,” said Nisson. Over four years, she and Harman worked with Dr. Justine Kluk, leading Harley Street dermatologist and scientific advisor, to develop the guidelines and training for Renude’s AI tool. “The key is having high-quality data. … In the case of learning about the skin, you need clear images of the skin and the skin conditions present for it to be assessed correctly,” Nisson said.
Renude’s current B2C service uses a combination of data sources and was trained on over 1 million skin-care images of different skin conditions on different types of skin. To use the service, customers first take a personalized quiz, then they send pictures of their skin to be analyzed by the AI. They can also supplement the process with a video chat with an aesthetician. The results are split into three skin concerns to address, to avoid overwhelming the skin with new products. To treat these concerns, customers receive a skin cleanser, a treatment, a hydrating product and a protective product. Customers pay a quarterly fee of £20 ($25), redeemable against the products they buy.
Now, in its launch of a B2B business, Renude is licensing its service to brands. It entered its first B2B partnership in September 2023 with French pharmacy beauty brand Laboratoire SVR. The company does £120 million annually ($131 million). That involved integrating its AI-driven recommendation platform into SVR’s website. The collaboration allowed SVR customers to receive complimentary tailored advice and routines featuring SVR products from Renude’s AI and professional aestheticians.
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To go further into AI chat skin care personalization, Renude is betting on the natural language AI chatbot it will introduce later this year. The tool’s development was funded in part by a grant from government body Innovate U.K. “We will be combining existing computer vision and machine learning with LLM technology to create a more conversational skin-care advisor,” said Harman.
“The goal is to build the world’s first dermatologist-approved AI skin advisor,” said Harman. “We are working with a team of dermatologists and aestheticians to [be able to address] any question you might have in a reliable, personal way.”
The current B2C service is priced at £20 ($25) for a photo analysis and £35 ($40) for a 30-minute video call with an aesthetician. The company is pricing its B2B offering based on usage, starting at £400 ($511) per month. At the moment, it is not determined whether the B2C AI chat service will be free or paid. It will most likely be licensed to B2B partners for a monthly fee.
Crucially, Renude recommends products from 40 brands, which are not paying Renude, according to the company. Meanwhile, AI services by Dermalogica or L’Oréal only recommend the brand’s own products.
In January, L’Oréal announced a text-based AI beauty service called Beauty Genius at the Computer Electronics Show. Beauty Genius was trained on more than 6,000 images and 10,000 products, as well as in-store conversations between shoppers and L’Oréal’s beauty experts.
