Despite concerns of a slowdown, some investors are still betting on the AI and fragrance booms in 2026. On Wednesday, the artificial intelligence-powered fragrance company Osmo announced it has secured $70 million in Series B funding.
“What we found missing in the fragrance industry writ large is agility,” said Osmo CEO Alex Wiltschko. “It matters for indie brands who have to move fast or they die. … And on the other extreme are the multinational CPGs, who need agility because they’re losing market share to these [indie] guys.”
The Series B funding was led by Two Sigma Ventures, with further backers including Alumni Ventures and Stripe CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison.
With the new backing, Osmo has expanded its C-suite. Its new hires include former Amyris and Unilever exec Mike Rytokoski as chief commercial officer; Givaudan and IFF veteran Mateusz Brzuchacz as chief operating officer; and Nate Pearson of Mercedes-Benz and Tesla as chief financial officer.
Rytokoski said he was attracted by Osmo’s mission to update an “antiquated” and “inefficient” industry. The company calls its core technology “olfactory intelligence.”
“Culture changes super fast, and so you need to move fast,” said Rytokoski. “There often are opportunities that open up quickly, so whoever is the first to be able to seize that opportunity is the one who gets the biggest prize.”
Wiltschko launched Osmo in 2023 with $60 million in Series A funding led by Lux Capital and Google Ventures. The company has worked to digitize scent and create tools to decode counterfeit sneakers for StockX using odor.
In 2025, Osmo launched an AI-powered fragrance house intended to compete with the likes of Givaudan and Dsm-Firmenich. Its clients thus far include the Museum of Pop Culture, functional fragrance brand Loucil, and journalist and TV host Alice Panikian.
“If we’re successful, you will know our name, but you’ll never see our product,” said Wiltschko. “We’re B2B. So our goal is to make other people’s brands truly excellent from a scent perspective, but we’re never going to launch a brand.”
The new funding will also contribute to the expansion of Osmo’s manufacturing site in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Osmo acquired the site in June and plans to move the entirety of its operations from its Manhattan office to New Jersey by the end of 2026.
The use of AI remains contentious among perfume consumers, with some viewing it as antithetical to the work of human perfumers. Osmo stated that it currently employs two master perfumers but declined to share how many perfumers and evaluators are on its staff.
“Our tools enable our perfumers to be more innovative, more efficient,” said Wiltschko. “It helps eliminate some of the more manual task and really focus on being as creative as they can.”
Osmo’s ultimate goals go beyond commercial perfumery, Wiltschko said, even while retailers like Ulta and Sephora continue to double down on new fragrance brands. In addition to speeding up the scent production pipeline and creating digitized scent tools, Wiltschko said Osmo’s “Mount Everest” would be to create scent-powered health-care diagnostic tools, such as creating a tool that could perform the work of medical service dogs.
“What you’re seeing is a growth in the demand of a specific category of scent, which is fine fragrance, which is less than 15% of the market,” he said. “Scent is everywhere. Scent is going nowhere. It’s a critical part of our daily life. You experience it throughout the day. It’s built into rituals, whether you know it or not.”
Creating scent-based tools will be a technical challenge, Wiltschko acknowledged. And with many investors rushing to capitalize on the AI boom, some have speculated that the industry is on the brink of a bubble. The key is to be one of the companies that survives such a collapse, Rytokoski said.
“I was [in Silicon Valley] during the dot-com boom,” said Rytokoski. “A lot of those companies failed. But then many of them became amazingly successful, like the Amazons and Facebooks. So I think the same thing is going to happen here. Some will fail, and others will succeed. Our objective is to be in the group of companies that will succeed.”
