Perfume tech firm Patina says it has raised $2 million in funding buyers, together with Betaworks and True Ventures.
The corporate focuses on creating new scent molecules utilizing superior molecular design, machine studying, and scent analysis. As we speak, a lot of the scent molecules utilized in client merchandise are created by a small variety of specialised labs, which then promote these molecules to perfume homes or cosmetics firms — the manufacturers that in the end flip them into perfumes, candles, or flavored merchandise. Patina is attempting to shake that up, coming into an space that has seen little innovation previously half century.
The corporate was based by Sean Raspet and Laura Sisson. Raspet is an artist and perfumer who, over time, developed an obsession with human senses and commenced creating new scent and taste molecules as a inventive pursuit. Sisson, in the meantime, got here from a background in meals and software program engineering, and have become obsessive about human senses after discovering a whole scientific discipline devoted to modeling them. The 2 met, naturally, at a scent artwork gallery in New York in 2024, the place Raspet was exhibiting new molecules and Sisson was an engineer constructing olfactory studying fashions.
“We began collaborating on analysis, and it grew to become clear that the timing was proper to lastly construct the instruments to grasp scent on the organic stage,” Raspet instructed TechCrunch. “That felt like an organization.”
They launched Patina final yr and commenced engaged on a foundational mannequin known as Sense1, designed to duplicate the scent receptors within the nostril and create what they describe as “the primary common code of odor and style.” At the moment, researchers largely use phrases like “floral” or “woody” to explain smells, an imprecise system that results in inconsistencies throughout areas and languages. Engaged on the receptor stage, he stated, permits them to create “never-before-smelled molecules and reconstruct the world’s rarest pure elements.”
Patina stated it’s already in talks to work with high perfume homes and with trend manufacturers about creating customized scents. The timing feels proper. Clients more and more need “newer, safer and extra expressive perfumes,” Sisson stated. There’s additionally supply-chain strain. Many pure elements like rose oil have gotten tougher to supply and dearer — an issue that artificial options may assist clear up. Patina’s molecules can simulate the odor of rose oil on the organic stage, mimicking the pure materials with out the necessity for plant extraction.
“These replications are much less carbon-intensive than the unique plant extract, consuming considerably much less water and petrochemicals,” Raspet stated.
Others on this house embrace startups like Osmo and legacy incumbents like Givaudan and Symrise, two of the biggest taste and perfume giants on the earth.
For Patina, there may be additionally an mental property angle price noting. Proper now, solely perfume molecules will be patented, not the formulation themselves, which means that scents can simply be replicated. This advantages the big perfume homes, the one gamers that would actually afford to develop sufficient scent variations in a lab. AI has made this course of cheaper and quicker, letting smaller firms like Patina create customized scent elements in weeks, not years.
“We predict by increasing the palette, perfumers and flavorists in any respect scales will be capable to develop and shield their signature type,” Raspet stated.
AI can also be reworking different components of the scent business. It’s serving to to part out animal testing, since new fashions can predict human-skin reactions almost as precisely, Raspet stated. And whereas understanding how major scents work at a molecular stage appeared far-fetched to researchers even 5 years in the past, the Patina group stated AI helps unlock breakthroughs in how the senses perform at a molecular stage.
Raspet stated the brand new funding has already allowed the group to maneuver from his yard into a correct workplace in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with a small group of chemists, and can go towards launching new molecules and funding new partnerships.
“All fashions want information to study from, and we’ve been in a position to fund collaborations with startups and tutorial labs to assemble this receptor activation information. On the identical time, we imagine extra computationally detailed simulation of interactions of molecules with odor receptors will likely be an enormous unlock for scaling,” he added.
The long-term ambition is to create what Raspet calls a “Pantone for scent” — a reference to the common color-matching system used throughout design and manufacturing industries — establishing the first scent molecules from which any odor or taste will be constructed. “The knowledge has been there the entire time, ready for the expertise to catch up and a group with the appropriate mixture of experience and obsession to unlock it,” Raspet stated. “These concepts can now be made actual, with Patina because the underlying intelligence layer.”
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