L’Oréal Invests in Metaverse Start-Up

In its first venture-capital investment in the metaverse or web3 worlds, the beauty giant is backing a company that lets brands build their own virtual spaces.

The minority investment in Digital Village, a “metaverse-as-a-service” platform that allows brands to develop blockchain-enabled 3D spaces from end to end, was made through L’Oréal’s corporate venture capital fund, BOLD.

Digital Village raised a total of $4 million in the round from BOLD and other investors, it said in a release. It will use the new capital to expand its platform’s capabilities, “adding new tools to power 3D world development, advanced avatar customization, and virtual store creation.”

Camille Kroely, L’Oréal’s chief metaverse and web3 officer, said in a statement that Digital Village’s tools “will be powerful enablers for our brands,” adding they share similar ideals of “sustainability, accessibility, and interoperability in the metaverse or Web3.”

Though the metaverse envisioned by companies like Meta remains years away and excitement around digital assets like NFTs has cooled, big brands in fashion and beauty continue investing in these spaces, even as the economy makes “unsexy” tech a greater priority in the near term. Right now, they offer brands a new channel for marketing, while McKinsey predicts they’ll become viable revenue streams in the future.

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