This young startup is taking on a fragrance industry that hasn’t changed in almost half a century

In an industry that has seen little innovation in nearly half a century, a young startup called Patina is determined to shake things up. The fragrance tech company announced that it has raised $2 million in funding from investors, including Betaworks and True Ventures. Patina's mission is to create new scent molecules using advanced molecular design, machine learning, and scent research.

The fragrance industry today relies heavily on a small number of specialized labs that create scent molecules and sell them to fragrance houses or cosmetics companies. These companies then turn them into perfumes, candles, or flavored products. However, Patina's founders, Sean Raspet and Laura Sisson, believe that this process is ripe for disruption.

Raspet, an artist and perfumer, and Sisson, a software engineer with a background in food and software engineering, met at a scent art gallery in New York in 2024, where Raspet was exhibiting new molecules and Sisson was building olfactory learning models. "We started collaborating on research, and it became clear that the timing was right to finally build the tools to understand scent at the biological level," Raspet told TechCrunch. "That felt like a company." The two launched Patina last year and began working on a foundational model called Sense1, designed to replicate the scent receptors in the nose and create what they describe as "the first universal code of smell and taste." Currently, researchers use imprecise terms like "floral" or "woody" to describe smells, leading to inconsistencies across regions and languages.

Patina is already in talks with top fragrance houses and fashion brands about creating custom scents. The timing feels right, as customers increasingly want "newer, safer and more expressive perfumes," according to Sisson. There's also supply-chain pressure, as many natural ingredients like rose oil become harder to produce and more expensive.

Patina's molecules can simulate the smell of rose oil at the biological level, mimicking the natural material without the need for plant extraction. "These replications are less carbon-intensive than the original plant extract, consuming significantly less water and petrochemicals," Raspet said. The company is not alone in this space, with startups like Osmo and legacy incumbents like Givaudan and Symrise, two of the largest flavor and fragrance giants in the world.

However, Patina believes that its use of AI and machine learning gives it a unique edge. The new funding will allow the team to launch new molecules and fund new partnerships. "All models need data to learn from, and we've been able to fund collaborations with startups and academic labs to gather this receptor activation data," Raspet added.