L'Oréal's first "Beauty Techathon" focusing on AI agents, has announced its Grand Finale champion.

July 8, 2025, Shanghai —— The "Youth Fun - Beauty Techathon", L'Oréal Group’s first hackathon successfully concluded at the Skin Health Management Innovation Center. After two consecutive days of intense final-round competition, the Risk Control Team stood out and won the championship with their innovation in the field of risk control. After the competition, L'Oréal China and the Skin Health Management Innovation Center of Daning Group also held a signing ceremony to jointly promote the youth empowerment ecosystem. ZHONG Xiaoyong, Secretary of the CPC Jing'an District Committee; ZHU Xian, Deputy District Mayor of Jing'an District (temporary); MAO Lipeng, Secretary of CPC & President, Jing'an Daning Function Zone Management; Vincent BOINAY, President of L’Oréal North Asia Zone and CEO of L’Oréal China; LAN Zhenzhen, Chief Corporate Affairs and Engagement Officer, L'Oréal North Asia & China; ZHAO Feng, Chief Information Officer for L’Oréal North Asia and China, and other members of the L'Oréal China Executive Committee attended this event.

Vincent BOINAY, President of L’Oréal North Asia Zone and CEO of L’Oréal China, extended warm congratulations to the winning teams. He said, "Innovation has been deeply rooted in our DNA, driving us to ‘seize what’s starting’. Our beauty tech transformation began in 2018, enabling us to better create beauty for each, powered by tech. Beauty Techathon is born out of the wonderful chemical reaction between innovation, youth, and ecosystem. We hope to jointly build an open platform with our partners to empower the younger generation, further activate the economic and social influence of beauty with the power of technological innovation, and jointly shape the future of beauty."

Vincent BOINAY, President of L’Oréal North Asia Zone and CEO of L’Oréal China shares his wishes for young people

The Peak Battle of the Finals: Co - drawing a New Picture of Youth Innovation and Transformation

This Beauty Techathon is aimed at AI talents, with the concept of "Tech for Good". Focusing on the hottest artificial intelligence at present, it has opened up four competition tracks: "Experience Innovator", "Content Moderator", " Conversion Analytic", and "AI Risk Protector". Students were invited to create real and measurable AI Agents in combination with real business application scenarios. Since the opening of the recruitment, a total of 136 works have been received from 97 key universities around the world, including C9 League (an alliance of top Chinese universities). After multi-stage selection, 14 teams advanced to the finals.

Contestants show the highlights of their AI works to judges

Contestants show the highlights of their AI works to judges

Witnessed by a powerful jury composed of an internal expert group from L'Oréal and external experts such as DUAN Lanchun, Managing Partner of Cathay Capital; LI Yufan, Co-founder of Veminsyn; and CHEN Yingda, Head of R&D and Product of Modelscope, Alibaba Cloud, the finalist teams gave wonderful roadshows and reports. Starting from the pain points in different fields of the beauty industry, they demonstrated their insights and thoughts. Finally, the Risk Control Team from track of AI Risk Protector, composed of students from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, won the championship with their innovation in the field of risk control combined with the beauty business scenario. The Dream Sailing and OGAS teams won the second place, and the Skin Intelligent Agent, It's a Nice Day, and ToBeTop1 teams won the third place. The winning teams will not only win the ¥200,000 prize money but also have the opportunity to be selected for the L'Oréal seedZ Management Trainee Program or the Summer Internship Program, starting a new chapter in their beauty industry careers. During the competition, the students not only improved their innovation ability but also gained a deeper understanding of beauty and skincare. L'Oréal specially invited makeup artists from the L'Oréal Paris brand and trainers from the Professional Products Division to create exclusive sharing courses for everyone.

The Risk Control Team wins the championship

Pooling Internal and External Resources to Build a Youth Empowerment Innovation Ecosystem

Since the joint launch of the Skin Health Management Innovation Center in May this year, the cooperation between L'Oréal China and the Center of Daning Group has been further upgraded. They signed a MOU on site, focusing on youth innovation powered by beauty tech. The two sides will cooperate comprehensively in areas such as student recruitment, professional empowerment, achievement transformation, incubation support, and publicity by coordinating resources from universities, technology companies, research institutions, industry associations, and expert think-tanks to jointly improve the professionalism of the Beauty Techathon and expand the ecosystem and influence.

L'Oréal China and Daning Group's Skin Health Management Innovation Center signed an agreement to deepen cooperation and jointly strengthen the youth empowerment ecosystem

During the competition, L'Oréal also actively leveraged internal and external advantageous resources to jointly build a youth-friendly empowerment platform. Among them, L'Oréal also carried out in-depth cooperation with ModelScope under Alibaba. Through the open source model resources of ModelScope, it provided technical support and innovation inspiration for the contestants. The winning teams will also receive a joint certificate from L'Oréal China and Alibaba Cloud. In addition, the CIOs from Disney, Mondelēz, and PepsiCo also shared with the contestants insights on the opportunities brought by the AI era, bringing inspiration to everyone.

Industry experts share AI trends at the event

From the launch of L'Oréal China Campus Charity Sales in response to large-scale development of the country's western regions in 2003 to the upgrade to the Youth Fun in 2021 to adapt to the digital wave, this flagship campus charity program over 20 years has donated more than 40 million yuan in total. Last year, to embrace the arrival of the digital intelligence era, the Youth Fun was comprehensively upgraded to a youth empowerment platform covering different age groups and spanning multiple fields. Beauty Techathon is a newly opened youth empowerment track for innovative talents in AI-related fields. This year, L'Oréal also joined hands with the China International Public Relations Association to build a platform for learning, communication, and creation for students who are interested in exploring and spreading beauty, relying on the China University Students PR Planning Contest.

The youth empowerment ecosystem fuels Youth Fun as it rides the waves toward the future