[Updated at 11:15 am]
Living Proof, a Cambridge, MA-based startup applying advances in material science from institutions such as MIT to the beauty industry, has raised $9 million in a new round of equity financing, according to a regulatory filing.
Polaris Venture Partners, which founded Living Proof with MIT inventor Bob Langer and others, provided the funding for the new venture capital round, according to a press release. Living Proof CEO Rob Robillard told me last year that Polaris was the sole venture backer of the company, and the only venture capitalists listed as directors on the firm’s SEC filing for this latest financing are Polaris partners Jon Flint and Amir Nashat. Last year we cited a report in peHub that the firm had raised $7 million in a Series A-3 round of venture financing.
The company quietly launched its first products for reducing hair frizz last year. The company has distributed the No Frizz line through the Web, home shopping channels like QVC, and Sephora beauty shops. The products use a material called polyflouroester, which is supposed to fit into the pores of hair shafts to protect them better than silicone and other key ingredients used in competing hair conditioners.
“This financing will give us the capital to create and market category-busting new products like we have with No Frizz,” Robillard said in a statement. “It will allow us to replicate this early success in markets outside the United States.”
Robillard, a former executive at L’Oreal and other consumer products firms, told me in December that the company planned to develop products for the skin care and cosmetics segments of the multibillion-dollar beauty industry. But he was careful not to reveal details of those products for competitive reasons.
[Editor’s note: this story was updated to include information from a company press release that we received after our story on the company’s new round of venture financing was posted.]
