Osmo is a company that has successfully digitized the sense of smell, creating an AI platform called "Olfactory Intelligence" (OI) to map, create, and reproduce scents from their molecular structure.
The company's technology was born from breakthroughs at Google Brain, particularly the application of graph neural networks to chemistry, which solved a century-old scientific problem of predicting a molecule's scent.
Osmo is commercializing its technology through a new fragrance house called "Generation," which uses AI to democratize and accelerate custom scent design, and by developing novel sensor applications like counterfeit detection for partners like StockX.
The long-term vision extends to significant healthcare and wellness applications, such as using scent analysis for non-invasive disease diagnostics.
12 quotes
Concerns Raised
Execution risk in scaling a novel, complex technology from the lab to mass-market products.
Building the necessary infrastructure, such as sensory panels, from scratch is capital and time-intensive.
Uncertainty around market adoption and the societal impact of giving computers a sense of smell.
Opportunities Identified
Disrupting the multi-billion dollar fragrance and flavor industry with a faster, AI-driven creation process.
Developing high-value B2B applications in product authentication, quality control, and materials science.
Pioneering a new field of digital health through non-invasive diagnostics based on analyzing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath or sweat.