Alex Wiltschko

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Osmo

Last Reviewed: September 24, 2026

Executive Summary

Alex Wiltschko is founder and CEO of Osmo, a company built on the idea of giving computers a sense of smell. Trained as an olfactory neuroscientist at Harvard, he led research at Google Brain on a model that predicts how a molecule smells from its structure, and Osmo spun out of that work in 2022. The company has since moved from research into commerce. It now designs fragrances for brands and manufactures them itself, from a facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, using a platform it calls Olfactory Intelligence. Osmo raised a $60 million Series A and, in February 2026, a $70 million Series B led by Two Sigma Ventures, for $130 million in total. Before Osmo, Wiltschko was part of two AI companies that were acquired: Whetlab, bought by Twitter in 2015, and Syllable, bought by Neumora in 2020.

Career Highlights

• Founder and CEO of Osmo, and a member of its board; Osmo spun out of Google Brain in 2022.
• Raised a $60M Series A backed by Lux Capital, GV and The Alexa Fund, and a $70M Series B led by Two Sigma Ventures in February 2026.
• Built Osmo into a fragrance designer and manufacturer with more than 100 employees across New Jersey and Boston and a 58,000 sq ft manufacturing and R&D facility in Elizabeth, NJ.
• Part of the Whetlab team that joined Twitter when it acquired the machine learning startup in June 2015.
• Founded Syllable Life Sciences, acquired by Neumora Therapeutics in 2020.
• Holds a Ph.D. in olfactory neuroscience from Harvard University.

Professional Journey

Wiltschko earned his doctorate in olfactory neuroscience at Harvard University, and his career since has joined machine learning and biology. In 2015 he was one of five members of Whetlab, a startup that automated the tuning of machine learning systems, who joined Twitter when it acquired the company. He also founded Syllable Life Sciences, which Neumora Therapeutics acquired in 2020 as one of several companies it combined to build a precision neuroscience platform.

At Google Brain, where he was a research scientist, Wiltschko led olfactory research that produced an AI model able to predict how a molecule smells from its structure. Osmo spun out of that work in 2022 and raised a $60 million Series A backed by Lux Capital, GV and The Alexa Fund. In 2023, the company partnered with the Gates Foundation on AI-driven ingredient discovery and published a paper in Science showing that neural networks could predict odour perception from molecular structure. That odour map became the basis of Osmo’s Olfactory Intelligence platform.

In 2024, Osmo demonstrated what it calls Scent Teleportation: it digitised the scent of a real plum and recreated it as a matching fragrance without human intervention. In 2025, it said it had filed patents for more new fragrance ingredients than the rest of the industry combined, and it launched what it calls the first AI-powered fragrance house. That offer extends custom fragrance development to independent brands as well as large consumer-goods companies.

In February 2026, Osmo raised a $70 million Series B led by Two Sigma Ventures, with participants including Valor, Atreides, Alumni Ventures and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison. It also announced a new executive team with commercial, operations and finance leaders from Amyris, Unilever, Givaudan, IFF, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla. The company moved manufacturing and R&D to a 58,000 sq ft site in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and has more than 100 employees across New Jersey and Boston. Wiltschko has summed up the business model in one line: “If we’re successful, you will know our name, but you’ll never see our product.”

Education

Harvard University

Ph.D., Olfactory Neuroscience