Generative AI music maker startup Suno raises $125M in funding

Generative artificial intelligence music creation platform Suno Inc. said today it has raised $125 million in funding that will fuel its ambition to create “a future where anyone can make music”. Today’s round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Matrix and Founder Collective, the startup said.

Founded by Harvard Ph.D. Mikey Shulman, Suno has rapidly emerged as one of the rising stars of the generative AI world thanks to its ability to create original songs based on the user’s text prompts and lyrics. Its AI helps create songs by generating harmonies, melodies and even fully-formed compositions. It claims to be able to generate full length songs worthy of top 40 radio airplay in mere seconds.

In a press release, Shulman was quoted as saying that Suno’s mission is to “democratize music creation and unlock the musical creativity within everyone.”

Suno believes its music creation platform has the potential to usher in a new generation of musicians by lowering the barrier to entry for musical expression, challenging the traditional models established by the music industry.

Despite its promise, Suno’s platform isn’t without controversy, and today’s funding round comes amid an ongoing debate over AI’s use of copyrighted data. Although Suno hasn’t revealed what music has been used to train its music-generation models, it seems almost certain that the startup has used materials without the explicit consent of their creators. For one thing, many of its musical outputs are somewhat similar to popular songs.

Ed Newton-Rex, the founder of Fairly Trained, a startup that certifies AI companies that don’t use any copyrighted work without a license, wrote in a recent article for Music Business Worldwide that Suno was most likely trained on copyrighted materials without consent. He pointed out he has been able to use its models to create music that closely resembles many copyrighted works.

One of Suno’s earliest investors, Antonio Rodriguez, told Rolling Stone that he is not concerned about the startup’s lack of licenses with music companies. He said that “this is the risk we had to underwrite”, pointing out that it is him and Suno’s other backers who will get sued if anyone decides to take legal action against the company. “Honestly, if we had deals with labels when this company got started, I probably wouldn’t have invested in it,” Rodriguez said. “I think that they needed to make this product without the constraints.”

For its part, Suno insists that its models do not make it easy for anyone to replicate well known songs. For example, a user won’t be able to tell it to “make a ballad in the style of Radiohead” or “create a song using Lady Gaga’s voice”.

Suno can also take confidence from the fact that it has plenty of allies in the AI industry, with the likes of OpenAI arguing that training on copyrighted data without licenses amounts to “fair use”. The legality of that claim is still being determined in the U.S. and other countries. Notably, the New York Times has sued OpenAI for training its GPT models on the newspaper’s archived content without consent, credit or compensation. Moreover, ABKCO, Concord, Universal Music Group and other publishers in the music industry have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic PBC for using their lyrics without consent.

The Worldwide Independent Network (WIN), an organization that represents indie music trade associations worldwide, has responded to the rise of AI-generated music by calling for the creation of a “licensing marketplace” that will ensure proper credit is given to artists, together with the ability to control how their work is used. Meanwhile, nearly 300 creators across the music and film industries have signed up to back the proposed No AI Fraud Act, which aims to establish an individual’s right to their voice and likeness, providing the legal basis for people to sue to protect their identities and content from being misused.

It remains to be seen how the broader AI industry will ultimately deal with copyright concerns, but today’s funding round can be seen as a vote of confidence in the transformative power of Suno’s technology.

In a blog post, Lightspeed Venture Partners notes that Suno has already racked up some impressive achievements, with more than 10 million people making music on its platform since it launched last year. The startup has also partnered with Microsoft Corp., integrating its model directly with that company’s Copilot software.

“If Suno can do all that in a few months on a budget, we can’t imagine what they can accomplish with this new funding, a growing team of the world’s most talented and music-obsessed people, and a product roadmap that will reinvent the way we all experience music,” Lightspeed wrote.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Designer