Chanel Sells Control of Capsum: The Lab Behind Luxury Skincare Changes Hands

Chanel is handing control of Capsum, the French company that develops and manufactures skincare, make-up and hair care for luxury beauty brands, to the Paris private equity firm Motion Equity Partners. The deal became public on 20 October 2026. Chanel, which had held a majority of Capsum for eleven years, keeps a minority stake, and so do the founder and chief executive Sébastien Bardon and his management team. The terms remain confidential.

In brief

Capsum began in 2008 as a research project between ESPCI Paris and Harvard University, and its three founding scientists, Jérôme Bibette, David Weitz and Bardon, turned it into a company. Its process, microfluidics, encloses an active ingredient in a droplet wrapped in a membrane a few micrometres thick, so that pigments and plant extracts stay apart until the product meets the skin. The capsules are formed one drop at a time, at very high speed, in laboratories and a factory in Marseille and at a solar-powered plant of 120,000 square feet in Austin, Texas.

Chanel was Capsum’s first and largest client. In 2015 the house launched Hydra Beauty Micro Sérum, a serum filled with camellia micro-droplets that Chanel Research developed with Capsum, followed by an eye gel in 2016 and Hydra Beauty Micro Crème in 2017. Capsum also develops products for La Prairie, Elizabeth Arden, L’Occitane and Galénic. Capsum employs about 300 people, holds more than 120 patents and had revenue of around 70 million euros in 2025, after growing by an average of 17 per cent a year over five years. In June 2026 it bought KKT Labs, a product development firm in Orlando, Florida. Its founder, Krupa Koestline, now runs Capsum’s business in the United States, which is set to reach 70 to 100 million US dollars in revenue within four to five years.

Motion Equity Partners buys majorities in French mid-sized companies and expands them through acquisitions. In July 2026 it took control of Tournaire, a family company in Grasse that makes aluminium containers for transporting high-value materials. Patrick Eisenchteter, a managing partner of the firm, described Capsum as a company where science leads, while Bardon spoke of “the third chapter of Capsum’s adventure”.

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Why it matters

Chanel now holds Capsum the way it holds its partners in watchmaking: as a minority owner, with the founder in charge. The house of the Wertheimer family has taken stakes in the case maker G&F Châtelain, in Romain Gauthier, F.P. Journe and MB&F, and on 8 October 2026 it joined F.P. Journe’s group in buying Ebel. Capsum travels the same road from the other direction, from control to partnership, and Chanel keeps its share in a technology it backed for eleven years.

In luxury beauty, value is shifting from the surface a product shows to the biology it works on, and the knowledge sits increasingly with the companies that formulate. Capsum sells that knowledge to many brands at once. With Motion’s capital, the plant in Austin and the team from KKT Labs, it can serve young American brands as well as the established houses.

The founders who brought microfluidics out of a university laboratory in 2008 stay as owners and stay in charge. For the brands that buy Capsum’s capsules, the supplier now stands on its own, with a house, a fund and its own management as shareholders.

Continue · The reading Beauty Enters Its Pincer Moment: Expression Gives Way to Vitality Value in luxury beauty moves from the surface a person shows the world to the biology beneath it, and with it the question of who owns the science. Read the article →