AI Music Firm Suno Raises $400 Million at $5.4 Billion Valuation Amid Copyright Lawsuits
Quick Look
- AI music generator Suno secured $400 million in Series D funding at a $5.4 billion valuation.
- This comes despite ongoing lawsuits from Universal Music Group and Sony over alleged training on copyrighted songs, though Warner Music Group settled.
AI-generated summary
Suno, the AI music generation company, announced on Wednesday that it has raised a $400 million Series D round, valuing the company at $5.4 billion. It was only about seven months ago that Suno raised at a $2.45 billion valuation, underscoring that investors are confident in the company’s future despite the litigation it faces.
That legal trouble isn’t minor. As Suno itself has admitted, the company trains its AI on copyrighted songs. The company argues that this is permissible according to fair use — a legal doctrine that allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission, but one that is highly fact-specific and can vary widely from case to case. Copyright holders like Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony, and German music collection organization GEMA have continued to pursue legal action against Suno, though Warner Music Group (WMG) settled and reached a licensing deal with the company last November.
When Sony and UMG initially sued Suno in 2024, the companies claimed that Suno had trained on 560 of their copyrighted works. That number has since grown meaningfully. Last month, the record labels filed to amend their complaint to allege that over 61,000 more songs were used for AI training without permission.
None of that appears to be slowing Suno’s growth. It continues to hover around the top of the App Store charts for music, and at the time it was raising its Series C round, users were generating over 7 million songs on Suno every day, according to a pitch deck obtained by Billboard.
The Series D round was led by Bond Capital, alongside IVP, Forerunner, Union Square Ventures, Alkeon, and Quiet. Existing investors Matrix, Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures, and Schroders Capital also contributed. Suno says that it is “thrilled to have participation from some of the best artists, producers, songwriters, and people from across the music industry,” without disclosing any names.
The omission is notable; named artist endorsements would go a long way toward defusing the narrative that the music industry is uniformly opposed to what Suno is building.
