Taste Is the Currency: What the Fragrance Industry Can Teach Every Founder About AI

by Sadasia Nyrie McCutchen ~ SEPT 2026

AI is changing the architecture of business in real time. The idea of a billion-dollar company built by one person no longer sounds like a Silicon Valley thought experiment. It feels increasingly plausible as the technology reshapes how products are built and how fast companies can move. But as AI expands what’s possible, today’s founders are confronting a harder question than adoption itself: where should machine intelligence end and human discernment begin?

That question has followed me into nearly every room I’ve been in over the last year and a half. I build C-suite communities for a living, and one word comes up constantly in conversations with business leaders: taste. While AI can accelerate scale and speed, it can’t manufacture a vibe or the judgment that creates one.

Taste, it turns out, is easier to talk about than to define, until you land in an industry built entirely around it. Fragrance is that industry. It’s the most sophisticated case study there is, built not just on product, but on discernment and translating chemistry into memory, identity, emotion, and culture.  Smell reaches us before language does, which makes perfume an unusually revealing place to study what happens when technology enters a deeply human art.

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So I went looking for someone who had moved beyond theory and into practice. At this year’s June 2026 World Perfumery Congress, on a panel called AI Meets Artistry: The Future of Fragrance Innovation, I met a founder who had already done what many executives are still only debating: he let AI into the creative process and paid close attention to what came back.

That founder was Matthew J. Sánchez of Matteo Parfums. As someone fluent in the language of technology and perfumery, Matthew understands the fine balance required to make both work. As he put it onstage – “AI will not replace the perfumer. It should be treated as a hand-in-hand creative partner.” 

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A TECHNICAL FOUNDER WITH A HUMAN VIEW OF FRAGRANCE

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Matthew isn’t an outsider to AI technology. Before launching Matteo Parfums, he worked in banking, product management, strategy, and operations, with AI and analytics experience at Capital One, GEICO, and on BlackRock’s AI teams. He studied Applied Mathematics and Chemistry in university (UCLA), and did research in natural language processing and semantic analysis (University of Michigan).  His hands-on experience gives his point of view unique credibility. 

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AI AS A TOOL TO SUPPORT PROCESS INSTEAD OF AUTHOR OUTCOMES

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Onstage, Matthew described AI as a creative tool that should be seen as an enabler. In one example, he used AI to research Aztec history, materials, and period context for a fragrance concept called Lover's Dew. The initial AI-generated direction leaned earthy, but his own knowledge of Aztec culture, mythology, and tradition, and his instinct for what the concept actually needed, pushed him toward something aquatic and fresh instead.

“My human intuition and creativity told me we should make it aquatic, given ancient Maya and Aztec geology and sacredness. It was literally surrounded by water,” says Matthew.

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That distinction feels especially relevant in fragrance, where the best products are rarely just technically correct. They’re memorable because they carry a point of view and a story. They communicate taste that evokes something felt and inspired.

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WHERE AI DISRUPTED THE MOOD

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Matthew was especially candid about where AI didn’t work in his process. Matteo Parfums created an internal AI platform, Tailor, for fragrance formulas and brief developments for about two and a half years. After three months of focus groups, the feedback was negative. Consumers perceived the AI-formulated fragrance as cold, distant, and inauthentic.

For his fine fragrance brand which is known for anchoring formulations in whimsy, multiculturalism, and imaginative inclusivity--the AI-generated scents lacked something essential.  “The formulations were missing the spirit of our brand,” explains Sánchez. 

In fragrance, nuance can speak volumes. An AI-first fragrance company might find that the same technology enhances its positioning in AI-led formulation. But Matthew’s experience suggests that brands need to be cautious about AI formulation in emotional storytelling.  When it comes to emotional intimacy, creativity, and authenticity, consumers may be far more sensitive to where technology has entered the process.

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A SMARTER PLACE FOR AI: BACK-END DEVELOPMENT

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Rather than force AI technology into the product story, Matthew redirected the tool where it was actually useful: financial auditing, compliance, supply chain, logistics, content, performance marketing, and audience segmentation. As a solo founder, Matthew finds it supports what he calls an ‘aerial view’ – a way to break out when he’s stuck. For Matthew, the brand’s back-end work sped up, leaving his perfumer’s signature intact.

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A FUTURE SPLIT BETWEEN SCALE AND SOUL

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Drawing from his experience building Lover's Dew, Matthew has outlined a process where AI is better suited to back-end development and simpler, less narrative-driven briefs. He discovered he can work with AI to absorb the routine product work and allow himself more time to spend energy on the high-artistry, story-led creations that define his signature fragrance collections.

For the industry, working with AI for scale and humans for emotion and soul can be a better way forward. Luxury relies on authorship and curation. It’s an assurance that a perfumer’s creativity and emotional authenticity has shaped what you’re holding.

Prestige fragrance increasingly sells through storytelling and emotional resonance, qualities that are hard to automate because they aren’t just about ingredients or structure.

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THE NEW LUXURY QUESTION

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Matthew also raised questions about the environmental cost of AI, broadening the conversation beyond creativity and into responsibility. He advocated for more intentional use of the technology, citing the energy and water demands associated with data centers and the ripple effects these systems have on local communities and agriculture. This pushed everyone in the room--perfumers and suppliers alike--to consider how more mindful and intentional AI can be utilized within the fragrance industry.

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It’s a reminder that the next chapter of luxury will be defined by innovation and discernment. Not every capability deserves to be used simply because it exists. In fragrance, as in fashion, refinement is often a matter of deciding what to leave out.  Matthew explains, “The use of AI should be more intentional and purposeful, not used for the sake of using it. I encourage all houses and creatives to use it responsibly.”

The industry is already moving in that direction. Osmo, an olfactory AI company, has said its near-term goal is to develop safer, more sustainable aroma molecules for everyday products, alongside its broader work using AI to discover and predict novel scent molecules. Others in the space are using AI to optimize formulations for biodegradability before a fragrance ever reaches production.

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If Matteo Parfums represents one philosophy of AI, using it to accelerate the business while protecting the creative core, companies like Osmo represent another. Rather than asking AI to imitate a perfumer's intuition, they’re using it to explore parts of olfactory science that would be difficult for humans to work through alone: discovering entirely new scent molecules that don’t yet exist in nature. Different approaches, but with the same underlying question: how can AI extend human creativity without erasing the humans behind it?

A FINAL REFLECTION

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I’ll admit this World Perfumery Congress panel changed how I think about my own work. The instinct to reach for AI first is strong in every room I sit in, mine included. Now, I’m left with a simpler question than the one I came in with: not “where can AI help?” but, “what would I never hand off?”

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Perfumery has always been about translating memory, cultural instinct, and emotion into something you can wear, stamped with the specific signature of the person who made it. That’s where the perfumer’s job actually lives day-to-day: holding the parameters AI doesn’t know how to care about--like whether a direction will truly connect with the market it’s built for. AI helps perfumers move faster and think past their own blind spots, but right now it doesn’t replace the essential nuanced decision-making that keeps a fragrance by humans, for humans.

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What Matthew Sánchez articulated at the 2026 World Perfumery Congress was a vision of how fragrance can merge contemporary practices and deeply traditional aesthetics.  His insights show us where back-end AI technology can sharpen and streamline company-building processes, while also allowing the emotional feeling of perfume to continue belonging to our real and personal imaginations.

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Want to learn more about Matteo Parfums? Click here!

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Photo Credit: Sadasia Nyrie McCutchen