Alex Wiltschko - Giving Computers A Sense Of Smell - [Invest Like the Best, EP.415]
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Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
My guest today is Alex Wilczko. Alex is the founder and CEO of Osmo, a science and technology company giving computers a sense of smell. He set out on a mission to digitize our sense of smell, and he describes how Osmo is teaching computers to both read and write scent. Alex was kind enough to walk me through the laboratory which you could watch in the video version of this interview on YouTube and Spotify, where he demonstrates the method to their madness. We discussed their first commercial application, a new brand called Generation, which is revolutionizing the fragrance industry by dramati
we smell a lot of stuff. Twice a day, we run sensory panels Yeah. Where we just sniff stuff and label stuff. So just like Scale AI has people labeling images all over the world. Turns out, like, we couldn't just buy that service from anybody. We had to build it Yeah. From the ground up. So this is where things get tested and low latency work happens. And then when we scale it, that happens elsewhere. So
they're literally going through Yes. Smelling stuff. Are they, like, notably talented smellers?
We we actually have literal rankings. Okay. And so, like, when we need really accurate data of a certain kind, we will call on our, like, top dogs, you know? So in there is synthetic chemistry. Just like a drug company create a new molecule to, you know, affect human health, we create new molecules that affect human perception. And we design those on spec for customers that, like, a large customer might say, alright. We're having this problem making our detergent smell this way or the regulatory landscape is changing. We can't use this molecule. Can you please help us? So we take all those req
The smell is so like remarkable and it's like what it wafts and chains. Yeah. It's so cool. So
it's like a little bit maple syrupy today. So I don't know what they're making. I guess they're they're going through a lot of commercial fragrances right now, so you're smelling kind of the sum total of our work. So behind you is what's called the perfumer's organ. Each bottle there is like kind of a key on a piano. And instead of 88 keys, it's about 1,200 keys. So a perfumer will be able to pull any of these ingredients together and mix them in the right ratios to recreate your scent memory. So like the smell of fresh laundry was made by a person, right, from some of these ingredients. The s
What is the first set of building blocks for doing that? So you've got, like, the individual, I don't know, isolated smells or whatever. Yep. How do you create the digital footprint for ea
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