When BeautyMatter last caught up with digital olfaction company Osmo, the company had its eyes on scent teleportation. It is currently putting these technologies to the test by using AI to digitize and rematerialize the essence of a plum. Through using a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry machine and headspace analysis, ​​it identified the molecules of the material, which are then uploaded to the cloud and become part of the company’s Principle Odor Map, the AI-driven tool that can predict what a combination of molecules will smell like. The resulting formula is then sent to an Osmo formulation robot that mixes the sample. Some materials are easier to extract than others, with the sulfurs in tropical fruit being one notably difficult example. To date, Osmo possesses the largest AI-compatible scent data bank worldwide, with experiments such as these only expanding that already impressive directory.

“Today’s fragrance business is not adapting and evolving far or fast enough to keep pace with conditions that have changed dramatically over the last 100 years. Some fragrance ingredients (usually made by smaller players, in regional brands, but occasionally nationally), are being banned, and some rightfully so. Farmers who manufacture the raw natural materials are being exploited. This will change,” founder and CEO Alex Wiltschko writes in the manifesto accompanying the platform’s launch. Osmo aims to conquer the current secrecy of the industry (partly driven by the desire to protect creations but also businesses) with a five-fold framework that champions transparency, speed, uniqueness, the perfumer at the center of the creation, and clean ingredients. “Transparency is critically important to the consumer. But how exactly this manifests in the industry is something that we're all going to have to discover together,” he tells BeautyMatter.

With the launch of Fragrance 2o, a private beta to help refine the creative process of incorporating Osmo’s technologies, the company is accepting briefs from fine fragrance brands in the US and European markets that are looking to launch their fragrance within three to six months. 

“We've spent the last two years building a world-class, totally unique team and a technology platform, which now actually can understand scent at a pretty granular level. We have an AI foundation model for scent and we're entering this new chapter of bringing that capability to value to people in the world,” Wiltschko tells BeautyMatter. “The goal of fragrance 2o is to learn. It's an experiment, and we've been fortunate enough to have a lot of conversations with a lot of brands so far, from very small to extremely large. There's certainly different desires among those different customer sets. But in general, what we're finding is people want to move faster. They want to be more engaged in the creative process and they want to go from idea to a great fragrance formula and a great story as quickly as possible.”

Assisting that process is an interface called Project Inspire where users enter a fragrance brief or an image, which is then translated into corresponding campaign imagery, marketing text descriptions, scent characteristics (such as musky, floral, fruity, solar, etc.), fragrance formula, (broken down into ingredients and concentration), as well as the formula size (to determine the carbon footprint) manufacturing cost of the formula. Users can also tweak the elements of the creation, for example boosting the musky facets of a scent or reducing the size of the formula for less environmental impact. Once the user is happy with the formula, they can then request samples from Osmo to be sent out to them.

“Basically we're turning all of this information into a notion of what's the olfactive target, and then we can convert that olfactive target into a fragrance formula,” he explains. “This is a starting place for perfumers, but could actually be a very strong first draft for perfume designers or for consumers. This is a new way of thinking about the earliest stages of perfume design.”

Osmo is also building a separate tool that adapts the formula for different regional compliance. Every time a new formula is created, Osmo can then retrieve or compound the formula using its in-house robots. “What would be a six-month process is now a six-minute process,” Wiltschko enthuses, explaining that the creative process can be done using human intuition and storytelling skills. AI is the platform enabling and boosting those ideas.

While Osmo’s database is partially built using existing fragrance formulas, the team is considerate of not replicating perfumes already on the market. “We're very mindful of the blurry line between inspiration and then what's not ethical. Our AI systems are inspired by all the fragrances that exist in the world. In fact, we make hundreds a week that are totally new and AI-guided. That's how we train our system, but we don't regurgitate production formulas,” he adds.

Having a diverse set of data for its AI system has also been top of mind. “Lots of production formulas, although useful, are not really what you need to train an AI system that understands sets. What we've had to do is basically build a data generation system from scratch, with sensory panels, mass spectrometers, formulation robots, and a team of compounders and technicians. All the data that goes into the system is built from the ground up,” Wiltschko explains.

Another tool that Osmo is integrating into this overarching system, the Weather Map, is the public perception, consumer spending, and social media discourse around existing perfume launches. On this map, orange dots represent the top 100 fine fragrances by retail sales, with the distance between the dots indicating how similar or dissimilar the scents are in character. A blue topographic map of mountain peaks indicates consumer spending. Clicking on any fragrance will give details on consumer discourse about the scent on online platforms like TikTok and Fragrantica, as well as launch date, sillage, and longevity. A “fog” on the map represents 70,000 other perfumes on the market. Users can also click on brands to see the best-selling fragrances and what potential scent category gaps there may be in their portfolio.

“This is information that's really critical for the people who are designing the perfumes or for the perfumers themselves in estimating what direction should we take. This is just another source of information in a cockpit that helps brand builders and perfume designers decide how can I rationally design a really high-quality fragrance?” Wiltschko comments.

While there have been game-changing fragrances that completely went against the tides of the industry (think CK One or Angel), he is confident that these tools will help brand builders make concerted decisions about their decision whether to play it safe or take a gamble. Currently, the Fragrance 2o program is open for submissions with no current closing deadline in mind (until Osmo has reached capacity for participants).

“We're trying to meet as many people as possible, get a diversity of clients, and see what the patterns are, and what we can build in order to make their lives better,” Wiltschko adds. “The invite is extended as broadly as possible. We will have a conversation with everybody who comes through the door. We want to learn, experiment, and see new ways of getting fragrance out faster. We're very excited to see how we can be helpful.”

Osmo’s desire to push the industry forward isn’t limited to this exciting new platform.  On October 28, the brand announced the launch of three new floral scent molecules developed through its proprietary AI technology and available for purchase and use in the EU and US markets.

Glossine, described as radiant and brightening, emulates the smell of jasmine, with great performance on dry fabrics and also perfume applications. Fractaline, which has a dual personality of either citrus/ginger or a floral/violet scent depending on the composition, also increases fragrance strength at low concentrations. Osmo sees its applications in fragrance, beauty, and home products. Quasarine, the most intense of the three, has a delicate and fresh jasmine aroma “that evokes the radiance of a celestial phenomenon” that can be used to infuse top notes with a fresh petal effect.

Thanks to Osmo’s proprietary approach, the process length and costs were able to be significantly reduced. "Our AI technology enables us to screen billions of molecules at a rate that would be impossible for humans," states Christophe Laudamiel, Osmo's Master Perfumer. "This not only speeds up the discovery process but also allows us to identify captives with desirable performance and 'special effects', regulatory compliance, and consumer safety.” From innovative tools for fragrance creation to building new blocks from which these scents can be made, Osmo is truly showing its dedication to changing the fragrance industry from the ground up.