AI music generator Suno still faces copyright lawsuits, raises another $400 million

Suno, the AI ​​music generation company, announced Wednesday that it has raised a $400 million Series D round, valuing the company at $5.4 billion. Just about seven months ago, Suno amassed a $2.45 billion valuation, underscoring that investors are confident in the company’s future despite the lawsuits it faces.

This legal problem is not simple. As Suno itself has admitted, the company trains its AI on copyrighted songs. The company argues that this is permissible under fair use — a legal principle that allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission, but one that is very specific and can vary widely from case to case.

Copyright holders such as Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony and German music collecting organization GEMA have continued to pursue legal action against Suno, despite Warner Music Group (WMG) settling and reaching a licensing agreement with the company last November.

When Sony and UMG initially sued Suno in 2024, the companies claimed that Suno had copied 560 of their copyrighted works. This number has since grown significantly. Last month, the record label filed an amendment to its complaint to allege that more than 61,000 more songs were used to train AI without permission.

None of that seems to slow Sonu’s growth. It continues to hover around the top of the App Store music charts, and at the time it was raising its Series C round, users were churning out more than 7 million songs on Suno every day, according to a presentation deck obtained by Billboard.

Bond Capital led the Series D round, along with IVP, Forerunner, Union Square Ventures, Alkeon, and Quiet. Existing investors Matrix, Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures and Schroders Capital also contributed. Sono says he is “thrilled to share some of the best artists, producers, songwriters and people from all over the music industry,” without revealing any names.

The omission is notable. Endorsing established artists would go a long way toward defusing the narrative that the music industry is uniformly opposed to what Sono is building.