Photo Credit: Stability AI
Stability AI has scored a $76 million Series B – for a total of over $230 million raised during the past two years and change – with support from all three majors, Electronic Arts, and others.
The AI music platform formally disclosed this latest funding round today, about three months following the rollout of “Stable Audio 3.0” and roughly one year after inking licensing pacts with the majors.
Evidently, those agreements laid the groundwork for expanded professional relationships. Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner Music alike participated in the Series B, with other new investors including xAI stakeholder AMD Ventures and Shinsegae’s Pacific Alliance Ventures.
Having the majors aboard as backers is, of course, preferable to battling them in the courtroom. At the same time, as underscored by Universal Music’s and Sony Music’s walled-garden disagreements with Suno, the support certainly comes with conditions.
But time will reveal the resulting operational impact (if any) on Stability in this department. On the opposite side of the arrangement, could AI investments be the majors’ key to assuaging shareholder concerns in the long run? And incidentally, does Stability happen to be interested in licensing a couple dozen patents?
As is so often the case in the quick-moving AI arena, we’re heavy on questions and light on answers. Back to the actual funding, then, Stability’s existing investor base includes but isn’t limited to director James Cameron, Napster founder Sean Parker, former Google head Eric Schmidt, and Universal Music-partnered Patrick Whitesell.
Schmidt, Parker, London’s Kadmos Capital, Greycroft, and Anthropic stakeholder Coatue participated in the Series B as well, with Thomas Laffont, co-founder of the latter firm, having now joined Stability’s board.
“While others are building generalized AI, Stability AI is building creative tools and doing it alongside the artists, studios, and rights holders whose work defines the field,” Laffont added. “I’m glad to be joining Prem and the team.”
Touching on some of the same points in remarks of his own, Stability CEO Prem Akkaraju touted the “unmatched group of investors” as “an affirmation of our vision where generative AI empowers every producer, musician, and storyteller,”
“Stability is unique in the AI field because we are creative people making tools for creatives,” the Screening Room co-founder proceeded in part. “Developing industry-defining technology means assembling a team of industry-defining titans, and that’s what we have done here.”
Regarding the business’s plans for the newly obtained capital, Stability noncommittally acknowledged an objective of building “creative tools designed around the artist’s process, across music, gaming, and entertainment.”
A bit more specifically, the company intends to use the fresh funding to develop “its product suite for creative production, deepen its applied research discipline, and expand its professional services arm.”