dsm-firmenich, innovators in nutrition, health, and beauty, today announces a groundbreaking new partnership with Boltz PBC, a pioneering startup founded by former MIT scientists that creates AI models for biomolecular modeling.
The partnership will put Boltz’s latest proprietary foundation models to work in dsm-firmenich’s industry-leading ingredient-discovery process, used to develop the next generation of scent and flavor molecules. Combining these frontier AI models with dsm-firmenich’s unrivaled library of taste and odor receptor data will help unlock new creative possibilities across the company’s businesses, accelerating innovation and opening up new spaces for innovation. The result of the partnership will be a set of exclusive models that capture decades’ worth of know-how in sensory sciences. These models will be used for predicting and designing molecule structure, learning how molecules interact with the specialized proteins that are our receptors — the sensors in our noses, mouths, and other parts of our bodies that translate the chemistry of the outside world into signals our brain can understand.
“Having launched the world’s first AI-created flavor back in 2020, dsm-firmenich has long been a pioneer in the use of AI. Being at the very forefront of this technology brings significant value to our businesses. That’s why we’ve chosen to partner with Boltz, a pioneering company with unrivalled AI models, built on scientific expertise from MIT, widely recognized as one of the world’s leading universities.”
Sarah Reisinger, Chief Science & Research Officer, dsm-firmenich
Through the partnership, dsm-firmenich’s teams will gain full access to the Boltz platform, including the Boltz Lab interface for scientists, the Boltz API, and a new integration with LLM agents that lets scientists orchestrate complex design and prediction workflows in natural language. Embedded Boltz researchers will work side by side with dsm-firmenich teams, pairing frontier AI models with vital hands-on expertise.
Access to world-leading AI models, like those created by Boltz, is unlocking a new level of creativity and speed for dsm-firmenich’s perfumers, flavorists, and scientists. They can now explore vast molecular possibilities with confidence — identifying promising directions, experimenting more freely, and bringing bold ideas to life faster.
“Beyond pharmaceuticals, biomolecular interaction and design models have the potential to transform life science products across many industries. We are excited to work with dsm-firmenich to tackle odor and taste receptors, some of the most interesting and understudied proteins in the human body, by combining our best-in-class models with their unmatched expertise in this field.”
