AI music company Suno raises $125 million in latest funding round

Suno, a music AI production company, has raised $125 million in its latest funding round, according to a post on the company blog. The AI ​​music company, which is one of the rare start-ups that can create voice, lyrics and instruments together, says it wants to usher in a “future where anyone can make music”.

Suno allows users to create full songs from simple text messages. While most of its technology is proprietary, the company relies on OpenAI's ChatGPT to generate lyrics and titles. Free users can create up to 10 songs per month, but with the Pro plan ($8 per month) and Premier plan ($24 per month), a user can create up to 500 songs or 2,000 songs, respectively. on a monthly basis and “general commercial terms” are given.

The company names some of its investors in the announcement, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Matrix and Founder Collective. Suno also says it is working closely with a team of consultants, including 3LAU, Aaron Levy, Alexander Wang, Amjad Massad, Andrej Karpathy, Aravid Srinivas, Brendan IribFlosstradamus, Fred Earsham, Guillermo Rauch and Shane Mac.

Suno is believed to be one of the most advanced music AI models on the market today, but in previous interviews, the company has not disclosed what materials go into its training data. Specific Ed Newton-Rexfounder of Fairly Trained and former VP of audio for Stability AI, warned in a recent article about Music Business Worldwide that it seems likely that Suno trained on copyrighted material without consent, given how he was able to create music using the very copyright-like model.

In a recent Rolling rock story about the company, investor Antonio Rodriguez stated that Suno's lack of licenses with music labels is not a concern to him, saying that this lack of such licenses is “the risk we had to take when we invested in the company, because we're the big wallet that's going to be sued behind these guys… Frankly, if we had label deals when this company started, I probably wouldn't have invested in it. I think they should have made this product without limitations.”

However, Suno representatives have previously said that their model won't let anyone create music using prompts like “Radiohead-style ballad” or using the voices of specific artists.

Many AI companies, including OpenAI, argue that copyright-free training is “fair use,” but the legality of this practice is still being determined in the United States. The New York Times has launched a lawsuit against OpenAI for training in its copyrighted files without consent, credit or compensation, and Universal Music Group, Concord, ABKCO and other music publishers have filed suit against Anthropic for using its lyrics to train the company's large language model.

In Suno's blog post, CEO Mikey Shulman wrote: “Today, we're excited to announce that we've raised $125 million to build a future of music where technology enhances, rather than replaces, our most valuable resource: human creativity.”

“We launched our first product eight months ago, enabling anyone to make a song with a simple idea,” he continued. “It's early days, but 10 million people have already created music using Suno. While GRAMMY-winning artists use Suno, our core user base is made up of everyday people making music — often for the first time.

“We've seen producers dig a cage, friends swap memes, and streamers co-create songs with stadium-sized audiences. We helped an artist who lost his voice bring his lyrics back to life after decades on the sidelines. We've seen teachers spark their students' imaginations by turning lessons into verse and stories into songs. Just this past weekend, we received heartwarming stories of mothers who were moved to tears by songs their loved ones created with a little help from Suno.”