AI Music News

Suno raises $400 million Series D at a $5.4 billion valuation

• Suno raised over $400 million in Series D funding at a $5.4 billion post-money valuation, announced June 3, 2026.
• Bond Capital led the round, joined by IVP, Forerunner, Union Square Ventures, Alkeon, and Quiet, with existing backers Matrix, Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures, and Schroders Capital.
• The valuation more than doubles the $2.45 billion Suno reported in November 2025, when it raised $250 million on roughly $200 million in revenue.

Udio asks a New York court to seal the number of audio files it trained on

• Udio filed a June 1, 2026 motion in New York federal court to seal one figure, the total number of audio files used to train its AI music model.
• Udio's lawyers call it the "Training Data Number" and argue rivals could use it to build competing products faster and more cheaply.
• The motion came days after Suno made the same request in its own Boston copyright case.

Anthropic files for an IPO at a $965B valuation while the music publishers' case rolls on

• Anthropic filed a confidential draft registration statement with the SEC for a proposed IPO, with share count and price still undecided.
• A recent raise pushed Anthropic's valuation to $965 billion, ahead of OpenAI's $852 billion.
• Anthropic said its run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion this month.

US Copyright Office leaders will headline the AIMP publishing summit on June 9

• The 2026 AIMP Global Music Publishing Summit hosts a fireside chat with the US Copyright Office on Tuesday, June 9 in New York City.
• Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter and General Counsel Emily L. Chapuis will speak, moderated by Songtradr's Art Levy.
• Chapuis helped lead the Office's multi-part report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.

Suno asks a federal court to seal the number of audio files it trained on

• Suno filed a May 29, 2026 motion to impound a single figure, the total number of audio files used to train its AI music model.
• CTO Georg Kucsko argues the count is not public and that rivals could use it to benchmark their own systems against Suno's.
• Journalist Matthew Lee of Inner City Press is pushing the court to unseal the number as a matter of public concern.

UK music-tech funding fell to £68.8M in 2025, a new MTUK report warns

• MTUK's second annual Sound Investments report finds UK music-tech funding peaked at £183m in 2021 and fell to £68.8m in 2025.
• Over the same period, overall UK tech funding dropped only 4.4%.
• Seed-stage music-tech investment grew from £8.4m in 2020 to £22.1m in 2025.

Anthropic raises $65 billion days after music publishers drop a key claim

• Anthropic raised $65 billion on May 28, 2026, at a $965 billion post-money valuation, ahead of OpenAI's $852 billion mark
• The round landed the same week music publishers, including Concord and Universal, dropped their vicarious infringement claim against Anthropic
• That retreat traces to the Supreme Court's pro-Cox ruling, which narrowed secondary copyright liability across AI cases

ABBA's Björn Ulvaeus says creators are 'not in the room' as AI laws take shape

• CISAC President Björn Ulvaeus, of ABBA, used the body's annual report to say human creators' voices are 'not being heard' in AI copyright talks
• Ulvaeus said creators 'are not in the room' as governments write new AI laws and run consultations
• He warned creators are 'being left out of the economic picture' and 'not being remunerated' for work used to train AI

Suno could face $9 billion in damages as labels add 61,026 tracks to the case

• Sony Music and Universal Music asked the court to expand their copyright case against Suno from 560 recordings to 61,026
• At the US statutory maximum of $150,000 per work, that raises Suno's potential damages from $84 million to more than $9.1 billion
• Sony is making a parallel move against Udio, seeking to add roughly 30,000 more recordings to that case

Top 5 AI music news of the week (25th – 31st May 2026)

AI music news (May 25–31 2026) ✓ AI helps musician with Parkinson's finish his album. ✓ GEMA v Suno delayed. ✓ Tonada skips PRO royalties. → Read more!

GEMA vs Suno verdict pushed from June to July 31, 2026

• The Munich Regional Court postponed its decision in GEMA's copyright case against Suno from June 12 to July 31, 2026.
• The court cited internal administrative reasons, so the delay says nothing about the likely outcome.
• A GEMA win would be the first major European ruling that AI platforms need a license to train on copyrighted music.

Parkinson's took his guitar playing, so AI helped Samuel Smith finish his album

• Samuel Smith, a 49-year-old London musician with Parkinson's, finished his album "The Art of Letting Go" after the disease eroded his guitar playing.
• He used AI song generators Suno and Udio to turn hummed melodies into demos, sometimes after 150 attempts, then handed those demos to live session players.
• Smith wrote all his own lyrics and music; the AI tools built reference demos, not the final studio recordings.