Suno, the AI music-generation company, announced it has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round, valuing the company at $5.4 billion. This funding follows a previous round approximately seven months ago, which valued Suno at $2.45 billion, highlighting investor confidence despite ongoing litigation against the company.
Legal challenges for Suno involve allegations that it trains its AI on copyrighted songs. The company argues its actions qualify as permissible under the fair use doctrine, which allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission. Major copyright holders, including Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony, and GEMA, have pursued legal action against Suno.
In 2024, both Sony and UMG sued Suno, claiming the company trained its AI using 560 of their copyrighted works. That figure has since expanded, with the record labels filing to amend their complaint to include over 61,000 additional songs allegedly utilized for AI training without permission.
Despite these legal hurdles, Suno has maintained its strong market position, regularly appearing near the top of App Store charts for music applications. At the time of its Series C fundraising, users were generating over 7 million songs daily on Suno, according to a pitch deck obtained by Billboard.
The Series D funding round was led by Bond Capital, with participation from IVP, Forerunner, Union Square Ventures, Alkeon, and Quiet. Existing investors, including Matrix, Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures, and Schroders Capital, also contributed to this round. Suno expressed excitement about the involvement of several prominent artists, producers, and songwriters from the music industry, although specific names were not disclosed.
The lack of disclosed artist endorsements has raised questions, as such backing could help alter perceptions regarding the music industry’s opposition to Suno’s business model.
