Alex Wiltschko
Founder & CEO, Osmo · 1 appearance on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
founderexecutivescientisthost
Alex Wiltschko is the founder and CEO of Osmo. He holds a Ph.D. in olfactory neuroscience from Harvard University and previously led research at Google Brain and Google DeepMind applying machine learning to biology.
29statements → 16claims → 7claims resolved → 86%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.52/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →
6 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 9 not checkable as stated how the 16 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 15 assertions · 1 opinion · 5 insights · 7 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 16 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 9 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Alex argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
Osmo's AI Predicts Molecule Odors Better Than Average Human Panelists
“And it turned out that our AI predictions of what these smells were going to be were better than the average panelist. Meaning if you're going to add one more person to this panel, you'd actually prefer to ask our software what it smells like that doesn't have…”
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Alex Wiltschko on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Alex Wiltschko said on Invest Like the Best that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Wiltschko: Text AI Is Nearing the Plateau of Its Capability S-Curve
“I think we're pretty close to the right side of that S-curve with text, right? Like, we kind of blew past it, but yeah, we passed the Turing test, right? Like, I regularly am fooled and curious whether or not this was written by ChatGPT or not. So text works. …”
Osmo Digitized and Teleported Its First Scent, a Summer Plum
“So this is kind of like a piece of history here, Plum One Point O. This was the first scent that was teleported. So the first scent to be digitized and then reconstituted in another place.”
Traditional Fragrance Houses Supply Existing Library Samples 90% of the Time
“Usually, 90% of the time, they go to their library, and they say, oh, we've already made something for somebody else. Let's send Patrick this scent that is from our library. And then you'll get that, and maybe you like it, maybe you're done. But 90% of the tim…”
Osmo's AI Predicts Molecule Odors Better Than Average Human Panelists
“And it turned out that our AI predictions of what these smells were going to be were better than the average panelist. Meaning if you're going to add one more person to this panel, you'd actually prefer to ask our software what it smells like that doesn't have…”
Osmo Chose Vertical Integration Because the Fragrance Industry Is an Oligopoly
“We went through a similar journey where we, I mean, if I could have sold the software here, and believe me, we've tried, like, yeah, we'd be selling software. We might not be talking but there's not that many fragrance houses, period”
Osmo Built a Scent Sensor to Authenticate Counterfeit Shoes in 20 Seconds
“What we've been able to do with StockX is show that we can take those really big sensors that are in the lab. Cut the right corners. Make them smaller. So it's actually, the sensors are about the size of these two shoe boxes together. That's one right there. A…”
Osmo Launches AI-Assisted Fragrance House 'Generation'
“We're launching a new kind of fragrance house called Generation, and the idea is to take all the technology that we've built, but also all the humanity, the people, the perfumers, the noses, and to combine that”
Traditional Bespoke Fragrance Creation Requires 12 to 18 Months
“Now you're looking at like a 12 to 18 month process of going back and forth. Every time you submit notes, it might take three months for them to get back to you.”
Osmo AI Condenses Multi-Month Fragrance Design Cycles Into Minutes
“So, and this is, by the way, this is a multi-month process that we're condensing down into, you know, minutes.”
Osmo Completely Automates GCMS Molecular Data Interpretation via Software
“And typically, this interpretation is done part by software, part by people, and what we've done at Osmo is make that happen entirely by software, so that's a part of our OI system.”
Pairing Scent Reading With Chemical Writing Unlocks Fast Active Learning
“If you can read and write, then you can create this virtuous cycle where you're creating data at every run of the loop. And so if you actually can create new smells, and then you can turn those smells into data readings of some kind, you're training AI, right?…”
Arbitrary Scent Reproduction Requires Dynamic On-The-Fly Ingredient Mixing
“The idea here is you need to have all the ingredients together that can be mixed on the fly to create any experience. Not just like eight pre-programmed experiences. That's like a slideshow, right? We want an actual display that can show anything.”
Wiltschko Predicts Computers Will Eventually Match or Replace Sniffer Dogs
“Whatever sniffer dogs are doing, I think eventually a computer will be able to, ah, either help with or do entirely.”
Mastering Botanical Scents Allows AI to Understand Human and Product Odors
“It turns out that by getting really good at designing The scents of fruits and flowers and vegetables, you actually for free get good at these other scent problems, like with human scent or with product scent, because the overlap of the actual molecules that y…”
Osmo Operates Dedicated Human Scent Labelers, Sensor Labs, and Robots
“We have a building of people that label smells all day every day, right? We have a laboratory full of sensors that 24 seven are dissecting scent down to the molecular level. We have robots that are creating smell.”
Osmo Runs In-House Sensory Panels Twice a Day to Label Data
“Twice a day we run sensory panels where we just sniff stuff and label stuff. So it's 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 from the ground up.”
Osmo Ranks Human Smell Panelists for High-Accuracy Data Collection
“We actually have literal rankings. And so, like, when we need really accurate data of a certain kind, we will call on our, like, top dogs, you know?”
Osmo's Digital Scent Map Operates in 300 Dimensions, Unlike RGB
“Our map is not three-dimensional like RGB, it's about 300 dimensional, which is, I think, why scent had to wait for artificial intelligence to be digitized, because it's just more complicated.”
Osmo's Lab Houses 10,000 to 20,000 AI-Designed Molecules
“So in this room is, you know, 10, 20,000 molecules. That have all been designed by AI, and we have a digital twin of each”
Osmo Synthesizes Odors Using Hundreds of Primary Scent Ingredients
“Instead of CMYK, we actually use hundreds of scents as kind of our primary odors, and That's what allows us to create, ah, all the sense that we need to train the AI system. So this is the writing part of the AI training loop.”
Osmo's Scent Reader Requires 4x to 8x Miniaturization for Portability
“We have to take that down by a factor of like four to eight in order for this to be something you would really say is portable. Right now we can move it around. We could deploy it. I don't think you can say it's portable today.”
Alex Wiltschko: Osmo Is My Final Project With No Exit Strategy
“The exit strategy is death. Right, like, this is the last thing I want to do.”
Osmo's Master Perfumer Designed Polo Blue and Abercrombie Fierce
“It was Polo Blue. It was Abercrombie and Fitch Fierce. Both fragrances that our master perfumer that we just passed designed, right, many years ago, so it's completely full circle now.”
Predicting Odor From Molecular Structure Was an Unsolved 100-Year Problem
“Like, let me draw a molecule on the whiteboard, like we're in chemistry class. Can you look at that molecule and tell me what it's going to smell like? Will it smell like apple or cinnamon or? You know, Anis or what? So it turns out that's like a hundred year …”
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| The AI Lab Revolutionizing Smell · Invest Like The Best | Mar 18, 2025 | 45m |