Alex Wiltschko started collecting fragrances when he was 12. He would go to T.J. Maxx every few weeks to search for discounted perfumes, waiting until they were marked down enough that he could afford them. He ended up pursuing a doctorate in olfactory neuroscience. “I went to the edge of what we know as a species about how smell works,” he said. “It turns out it’s not that much.”
Wiltschko was also a computer nerd—a combination, he jokes, that didn’t make him super popular in high school, but it worked out for him in the end. Today, Wiltschko is the founder and CEO of Osmo, a company that uses artificial intelligence to digitize the sense of smell—or, to put it another way, that gives computers the sense of smell. The company, which works with anyone from Instagram influencers to laundry brands to StockX, spun out of Alphabet’s Google and has raised more than $60 million in funding, including from Lux Capital and GV.
