Firmenich is a 125-year-old privately owned Swiss company and one of the world's largest developers and manufacturers of perfumes and flavors. It aims to improve flavor and fragrance creation through artificial intelligence and, in collaboration with EPFL Lausanne, has set up a digital lab focused on AI-based creation. The result is a solution that uses AI-driven algorithms to create fragrance and flavor formulas. As a result, the company has created the world's first AI flavor that opens up a new frontier of expanded creativity with this solution. As a result, Firmenich is able to halve time-to-market, increase product creativity and achieve high consumer acceptance.
Jury president: Dr. Lukas Bär
There are more astronauts on our planet than perfumers! And our winners are the world champions of perfumers. This year's Digital Innovation of the Year Award goes to: Firmenich!
The 125-year-old family-owned company from Geneva is the world market leader in artificial flavors and fragrances. Almost every perfume or food sold in the world contains one of their ingredients. They are absolute super-noses, capable not only of interpreting scents but also of creating highly complex perfumes with them. Until now, the "Grand Seigneurs of Frangrance" have done this with their knowledge of 20, 30 years of creation work. Until, with a lot of innovative power, they dared to co-create aromas with the help of artificial intelligence.Together with EPFL Lausanne, they developed a digital lab where the world's first AI flavor was developed here in Switzerland.
They have virtually fed all the knowledge from the minds of their perfumers into a digital dataset to create perfumes. Customer wishes like: Which aromas? Costs, but also CO2 imprint, can be entered on an interface and the large dataset delivers an algorithm that is supplemented with the knowledge of the perfumers. The results are fascinating: the formula for a perfume is found in half the usual time, first perfumes have already been launched on the market, developed by and with Artificial Intelligence. The commercial benefits are guaranteed.
It is inspiring how Firmenich combines the almost artistic work of humans with IT. This co-creation makes digital work a highly emotional one. Firmenich has thus reinvented itself! And this in a traditional luxury sector: anyone who wants to reinvent the profession of perfumer must have a phenomenal amount of courage.
The jury is impressed by the innovative strength with which Firmenich has once again opened the boundaries for creativity wide. And is thus the deserved winner of the Digital Innovation of the Year award.
Press Release (in German)
