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Suno has raised almost $1 billion and secured a valuation above $5 billion by promising to let anyone create complete songs from text prompts. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, startup says more than 100 million people have used its product since 2023 and over two million pay up to $30 monthly. Its rapid growth, however, is colliding with copyright lawsuits from Universal Music Group and Sony Music, which accuse Suno of using protected works without permission to train its artificial-intelligence model.

Details

• Company origins: Physicist Mikey Shulman founded Suno with Georg Kucsko, Martin Camacho and Keenan Freyberg after they worked together at financial-software company Kensho. The startup initially built text-to-audio technology called Bark, then shifted toward music after outside developers embraced that use.
• Product mechanics: Users describe a genre, lyrics or mood, and Suno generates a complete song that can be revised through further prompts. Paying customers can train the system on their voices. Shulman compares the intended effect to Instagram widening participation in photography.
• Usage claims: Suno says more than 80% of users listen to their own music inside the app. It says an average user visits at least three days weekly, spends more than 30 minutes there daily and creates 42 songs each month.
• Training dispute: Suno acknowledges training its models on copyrighted material but says the technology creates new songs rather than copying existing ones. A hacker told 404 Media that millions of tracks were scraped from services including YouTube and Deezer. Suno said it used publicly available files and metadata on third-party websites.
• Warner agreement: Warner Music settled its lawsuit and signed a November 2025 deal allowing participating artists’ works to be licensed to Suno for an undisclosed sales share. Warner, which represents less than 20% of US listening, says the arrangement can create additional revenue. Universal and Sony remain in litigation.
• Streaming scale: Luminate counted more than 37 million songs uploaded to streaming services last year, about 106,000 daily, although AI’s contribution was unclear. Deezer says AI music now exceeds half of daily uploads, while Spotify said it represented far below 0.5% of listening in October.

Background

Paid streaming restored recording-industry growth after piracy contributed to a 15-year revenue decline. Generative AI is arriving as streaming growth slows, reviving disputes over licensing, compensation and whether an expanding supply of machine-made songs will divert attention from human artists.

What’s next

Suno says it will begin incorporating licensed Warner songs later this year, subject to individual artists’ approval. The rollout will reveal who participates and how their work may be remixed, while the continuing Universal and Sony cases will test Suno’s training practices.