AI music generator Suno has closed a $250 million Series C round at a $2.45 billion post-money valuation.
The round was led by Menlo Ventures with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Hallwood Media, Lightspeed and Matrix.
The funding round comes as Suno navigates significant legal challenges from the music industry.
The company is currently defending itself against copyright infringement lawsuits filed by record labels owned by Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group.
Earlier this month, Danish music rights organization Koda sued the US-based company, claiming that it trained its AI model on copyrighted music without permission or payment.
The lawsuit followed similar legal action taken against Suno by German collection society and licensing body GEMA earlier this year.
Suno said today (November 19) that it is seeing “unprecedented adoption across both new and established creators”
Mikey Shulman, Co-Founder and CEO of Suno, wrote in a blog post published today that “nearly 100 million people have made music on Suno” over the last two years.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Suno has reached $200 million in annual revenue, mainly derived from subscriptions.
The funding also arrives as Suno expands beyond AI music generation into a full production ecosystem. In September, the company launched Suno Studio, described as “the first-ever generative audio workstation,” which combines professional multi-track editing capabilities with AI-powered stem generation.
Days before Studio’s debut, Suno introduced v5, claimed to be the company’s “most powerful music model to date”. As part of the build-up to Suno Studio, Suno acquired WavTool, claimed to be the first browser-based DAW.
“Suno is the world’s No.1 music creation app, making music accessible to everyone. Mikey and the team have built something people genuinely love using and millions of fans are on the platform every day, creating original songs and sharing them with friends,” said Amy Martin, Partner, Menlo Ventures.
“Mikey and the team have built something people genuinely love using and millions of fans are on the platform every day, creating original songs and sharing them with friends.”
Amy Martin, Menlo Ventures
The company said that the funding will enable Suno to accelerate building “more sophisticated tools for professionals, more delightful experiences for casual creators, and new ways for people to share and connect socially through music”.
“In just two years, we’ve seen millions of people make their ideas a reality through Suno, from first-time creators to top songwriters and producers integrating the tool into their daily workflows.”
Mikey Shulman
Mikey Shulman added: “We’re seeing the future of music take shape in real time.
“In just two years, we’ve seen millions of people make their ideas a reality through Suno, from first-time creators to top songwriters and producers integrating the tool into their daily workflows. This funding allows us to keep expanding what’s possible, empowering more artists to experiment, collaborate, and build on their creativity. We’re proud to be at the forefront of this historic moment for music.”
Suno’s latest funding round arrives as the global music business grapples with a rising influx of AI content on music streaming services.
As reported last week, fully AI-generated music now accounts for 34% of all tracks delivered to Deezer each day, according to data released by the French streaming platform.
Deezer said that it now receives over 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily.
The new stat marked a significant jump from the 30,000 figure it reported in September, the 20,000 it disclosed in April, and the 10,000 it disclosed in January when it first launched its proprietary AI detection tool.
According to the platform, up to 70% of plays for fully AI-generated tracks have been detected as fraudulent, with Deezer filtering these streams out of royalty payments.
Although fully AI-generated music currently accounts for only around 0.5% of all streams on Deezer, the company maintains that fraudulent activity remains the primary motivation behind these uploads.
Deezer has been among the most aggressive streaming services in detecting AI-generated content, building on its broader efforts to combat low-quality uploads.
The platform previously launched an “artist-centric” payment model with Universal Music Group in 2023 and reported deleting 26 million “useless” tracks as part of those efforts.
In September, rival Spotify reported that it had deleted over 75 million ‘spammy’ tracks and unveiled a suite of new AI music policies.Music Business Worldwide