This new beginning takes on a perfume industry that hasn’t changed in nearly half a century

Fragrance technology company Patina says it has raised $2 million in funding from investors, including Betaworks and True Ventures.

The company focuses on creating new fragrance molecules using advanced molecular design, machine learning, and fragrance research. Today, most of the fragrance molecules used in consumer products are created by a small number of specialized labs, which then sell those molecules to fragrance houses or cosmetic companies – the types that eventually turn them into perfumes, candles, or flavored products. Patina is trying to shake that up, entering a space that has seen a lot of innovation in the last half century.

The company was founded by Sean Raspet and Laura Sisson. Raspet is an artist and perfumer who over time, developed a fascination with the human senses and began to create new molecules of scents and flavors as a creative medium. Sisson himself came from a background in nutrition and software engineering, and became fascinated with the human senses after discovering an entire field of science devoted to modeling. The two met, naturally, at the olfactory art scene in New York in 2024, where Raspet was demonstrating new molecules and Sisson was an engineer building models for olfactory learning.

“We started collaborating on research, and it became clear that the time was right to finally build tools to understand smell at the biological level,” Raspet told TechCrunch. “That sounds like a company.”

They launched Patina last year and began working on a basic model called Sense1, designed to replicate the smell receptors in the nose and create what they describe as “the first universal code for smell and taste.” Currently, researchers mostly use words such as “flowers” or “woods” to describe scent, a mysterious system that leads to changes in places and languages. Working at the receptor level, he said, allows them to create “molecules that have never smelled before and recreate the world’s rarest natural ingredients.”

Patina said she is in talks to collaborate with top fragrance houses and fashion brands to create custom fragrances. The timing feels right. Customers are increasingly looking for “fresher, safer and more expressive fragrances,” Sisson said. There is also pressure on the supply chain. Many natural ingredients like rose oil are difficult to produce and expensive – a problem that synthetic alternatives can help solve. Patina molecules can mimic the scent of rose oil on a biological level, imitating natural substances without the need for plant extraction.

“These solutions are more carbon-intensive than the original extract plant, using much less water and petrochemicals,” said Raspet.

Others in this space include upstarts like Osmo and incumbents like Givaudan and Symrise, two of the biggest flavor giants in the world.

For Patina, there is also an intellectual property angle to consider. Currently, only fragrance molecules can be patented, not the formulas themselves, meaning fragrances can be easily replicated. This benefits the big fragrance houses, which are the only players who could really develop a sufficient variety of fragrances in the lab. AI has made the process cheaper and faster, allowing small companies like Patina to create custom fragrance ingredients in weeks, not years.

“We think that by expanding the palette, perfumers and flavorists of all scales will be able to develop and protect their signature style,” said Raspet.

AI is also revolutionizing other parts of the fragrance industry. It helps to eliminate animal testing, as new species can predict human skin reactions almost accurately, Raspet said. And while understanding how basic scents work at the molecular level seemed far away for researchers even five years ago, the Patina team said AI is helping to unlock breakthroughs in how the senses work at the molecular level.

Raspet said the new funding has already allowed the team to move from his backyard to a convenient office in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with a small team of chemists, and will focus on introducing new molecules and funding new partnerships.

“All models need data from which we must study, and we were able to support collaboration with startups and academic labs to collect this receptor activation data. At the same time, we believe that a more detailed computational simulation of the interaction of molecules with odor receptors will be a great opening for scaling,” he added.

The long-term ambition is to create what Raspet calls the “Pantone of fragrance” – a reference to the color matching system used in all design and manufacturing industries – to create scent molecules from which any smell or taste can be created. “The knowledge has been there all along, waiting for technology to catch up and a team with the right combination of expertise and eagerness to unlock it,” Raspet said. “These ideas can now be made a reality, with Patina as an intelligence layer.”