Osmo CEO Alex Wiltschko on Democratizing Fragrance Creation

Combining molecular prediction, safety modeling, and production under one AI-powered roof, Osmo aims to accelerate development timelines and expand access to custom fragrance creation, empowering indie brands and reshaping the competitive landscape.

Fragrance creation has long been regarded as one of the most human, intuitive, and artisanal disciplines in beauty, a craft shaped by nature, memory, and the trained noses of master perfumers.

With artificial intelligence now entering the lab, that tradition is being challenged, and the framework through which fragrance is discovered, designed, and brought to market is shifting. In the view of Osmo founder and CEO Alex Wiltschko, PhD, this isn’t just disruption – it’s democratization.

Launched in January 2023 with $60 million in Series A funding, Osmo is building what it calls “AI for scent,” a proprietary platform designed to help brands create beautiful, data-driven fragrances faster and more precisely than ever before.

In doing so, the company may be reshaping not only how fragrances are made, but who gets to make them.

“So many people are on that threshold of being able to launch a business, whether they want to put a candle in their gift shop or they run a surf company and they want a room spray that smells like the beach, or whatever. There’s so much opportunity for people creating custom experiences and bringing scent into their life and their brand. Today, it’s a zero-billion-dollar business. But it will grow.”

Already, Osmo is undertaking projects that span both commercial launches and creative experimentation, turning abstract ideas, cultural moments, and brand identities into fully realized fragrances.

The company and its Master Perfumer, Christophe Laudamiel, partnered with a beauty founder to launch her fragrance brand, Kindred by Alice Panikian.

Other creations include Electric Harmony, the Museum of Pop Culture’s first-ever signature scent inspired by its 50-foot guitar cyclone sculpture, and Endless Night – “the scent of a nightmare” – made for the launch of 2025 found-footage horror film “Dream Eater.”

Olfactory Intelligence

At the core of Osmo is its proprietary AI-for-scent platform.

Combining dozens of AI models and proprietary datasets, the system delivers what Osmo calls Olfactory Intelligence, an expansive set of predictive capabilities that enables the company to design, test, and evaluate molecules computationally before they ever reach production.

“In order to create a new fragrance ingredient, you have to not only predict what that molecule will smell like, how intense it will smell, how you should synthesize it,” Wiltschko explained. “It also must be safe – there’s biodegradability, skin irritancy, ocular irritancy, marine ecotoxicology, genotoxicity, and more.”

Osmo’s predictive models are integrated into a single flexible platform with an ambitious vision. “We’re about creating enormous numbers of truly beautiful scents and increasing their prevalence in the world,” Wiltschko said.

In fact, Osmo reported that in 2025 it published more patents on new fragrance ingredients than the rest of the industry combined, a signal that its molecular discovery engine is generating tangible outputs.

Empowering Indie Brands

Osmo operates across three lines of business: discovering new fragrance ingredients for large B2B players; white-labeling AI tools for multinational CPG companies; and working directly with indie brands to design and manufacture custom fragrance oils.

It’s that third category that may most dramatically alter the competitive landscape.

Traditionally, indie brands must grapple with a tradeoff. Move fast, and you may receive a catalog fragrance, potentially something previously rejected or already on the market. Go custom, and timelines can stretch one to two years, often with significant minimum order quantities.

“If you want a great custom fragrance that fits your brand and will win with your consumers and you want to do it fast – you can’t,” Wiltschko said.

Osmo addresses this challenge with faster, customizable development and the assurance – grounded in robust data – that consumers will respond. The company announced a $70 million Series B funding round in February 2026 to scale its Olfactory Intelligence platform across sectors and expand its New Jersey manufacturing facility.

“We are on track to be able to provide self-service so you can design your own fragrance in a way which has never been seen before,” said Wiltschko.

It’s a compelling proposition for indie founders prioritizing speed, differentiation, and capital efficiency. Compressed development timelines and data-informed decision-making may allow smaller brands to compete more directly with established players and even create entirely new scent-driven businesses.

Wiltschko noted a marked shift in attitudes at recent trade shows.

“People used to come by and talk to us and be nervous – what’s the world going to be like if you guys are the way that fragrance is made? Now everybody that comes to see us is like, ‘Okay, this is the future, I want to be part of it.’”

AI: The Next Tool in a Long Tradition

Fragrance has always evolved alongside technology. Wiltschko is quick to situate Osmo within that historical continuum.

“It’s human to use tools. Perfumers already do. Today they formulate in software, essentially in versions of Excel that every fragrance house has. Before that, perfumers wrote it down by hand, and they took that piece of paper and walked it down the hall and asked somebody to compound it. The shift to compounding from a laptop and receiving samples quickly was a real revolution in the late 90s and early aughts,” he noted.

From headspace technology to gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, technological advances have consistently expanded perfumers’ creative capabilities. Osmo, Wiltschko argues, is part of that same lineage.

“I view what we’re doing at Osmo as part of a long tradition of heightening the craft and adding tools to the toolboxes of people who basically design emotion and memory.”

With a background that bridges neuroscience and deep learning, Wiltschko has spent nearly two decades working in AI. He resists framing Osmo as automation replacing artistry.

“I’ve been working with artificial intelligence in some form or the other for 15 or 20 years,” he said, “and I’ve got to tell you, it’s through and through a tool for human endeavor.”

AI, Intent, and the Future of Creativity

The broader conversation around AI often centers on displacement. Wiltschko acknowledged that the professional landscape is transforming rapidly.

“For knowledge workers, one person can do the work of maybe three or four or five people now. That might be 10 or 20 people in six months, and who knows what’s going to happen after that.”

But in a category defined by memory, emotion, and artistry, Osmo’s bet is that better tools expand – rather than diminish – human creativity in the fragrance industry.

Wiltschko explained: “You have to have intent, you have to know what you want. People who can clearly specify what their goals are and what they want to bring into the world will greatly benefit from this technology. And I think we’ll see people learning to use these tools better and scaling themselves – we might even see a one-person billion-dollar company at some point.”

For brands unsure where to begin, Wiltschko’s advice was direct. “Go to studio.osmo.ai and sign up for the beta. As we roll this out to more brands, I think you’ll be astounded with what you can do, what you can create, and the speed with which you can create it.”

Where to Find Osmo
Website: www.osmo.ai
LinkedIn: OsmoLabs
Instagram: @osmo_smell