Sony, Universal and Warner Music Back Stability AI in a $76M Series B

In 2024 the Recording Industry Association of America sued AI music startups Suno and Udio for copyright infringement, alleging they had trained on recordings without permission. The three major music groups behind that suit have now become shareholders in a generative AI company.

Stability AI has raised $76 million in a Series B, the company announced. Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group all appear on the list of new investors, alongside game publisher Electronic Arts, AMD Ventures and Pacific Alliance Ventures.

Same Models, Different Customers

Stability AI opened up the image generation field in 2022 when it released Stable Diffusion, publishing the weights openly and building an enormous developer community in the process. The problem was that none of it turned into revenue. The cultural footprint was large; the business model was not there.

What has changed at this company is not the models but the customers. It did not abandon images for music. Stable Diffusion remains a core product line, now joined by audio and video/3D. What shifted is who the models are sold to: away from an open-source community that downloads them for free, toward paying professional creatives and enterprises in music, gaming and entertainment. The company listing “expanding its professional services arm” among the uses for this round points the same direction.

That shift is what made the majors’ investment possible. A model anyone can download is an uncontrollable risk from a rights holder’s perspective. A professional tool bound by licenses and contracts is something to collaborate with.

Fully Licensed Training Data

The announcement follows the launch of Stable Audio 3.0, a family of open-weight music models trained entirely on licensed data. Artists can reach it through a new DAW plugin or directly at StableAudio.com.

Suno and Udio each settled the RIAA litigation separately. Suno reached an agreement with Warner Music and then raised a $400 million Series D in June at a $5.4 billion valuation; Udio settled with Universal Music and is preparing a joint licensing platform. In that progression from lawsuits to settlements to collaboration, Stability AI is closer to having skipped the litigation stage altogether by leading with licensed data.

Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Stability AI, said what makes the company unusual in AI is that creative people are making tools for creatives, and that its investors supply not only capital but expertise, credibility and direct connections to artists.

Two Years Ago It Carried $100 Million in Debt

This round is also a measure of how far the company has come back.

Stability AI was valued at $1 billion in 2022. By October 2023 it was reportedly spending $8 million a month, and an attempt to raise at a $4 billion valuation fell through. In March 2024 founder and CEO Emad Mostaque resigned, writing that the concentration of power in AI is bad for everyone.

When Akkaraju — previously CEO of Weta Digital — took over in June 2024, the company was carrying roughly $100 million in debt and about $300 million in future cloud commitments. Sean Parker, the former Facebook president, and Greycroft led an $80 million infusion that kept it alive. By December that year Akkaraju said the debt was cleared and the business was growing in triple digits.

The company says total funding under Akkaraju now reaches $232 million across two equity rounds and convertible notes. Capital raised before his arrival is not counted in that figure, and no valuation was disclosed for this round.

A Cap Table Built From the Entertainment Industry

The existing investor list says a good deal about what this company is. It includes Coatue, Greycroft, Kadmos Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mantis Capital, Sound Ventures and the marketing group WPP, which has acted as both strategic partner and investor throughout the period under new leadership.

Individual backers include Sean Parker, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, filmmaker James Cameron, former Disney executive Kevin Mayer, television producer Mark Burnett, Patrick Whitesell, Robert Nelsen and Vivi Nevo. Coatue, Greycroft, Kadmos Capital, Parker and Schmidt are all investing for a second consecutive round under the current management.

Coatue co-founder Thomas Laffont has joined the board. Laffont said that while others build generalized AI, Stability AI is building creative tools and doing it alongside the artists, studios and rights holders whose work defines the field. The board also includes James Cameron, Sean Parker, Greycroft co-founder and managing partner Dana Settle, and Akkaraju.

The Competitive Picture

Suno leads consumer AI music generation, with 2 million paying subscribers and $300 million in annual recurring revenue as of February 2026. ElevenLabs, an AI voice platform past $500 million ARR, entered the category in April 2026 with a dedicated music app. Udio is preparing its joint platform with Universal Music.

Stability AI sits somewhere else. Rather than competing as a consumer service where anyone makes a song, it is building tools that fit into a professional creative’s workflow — the DAW plugin, the open-weight models and the professional services organization all point that way. Three major labels becoming shareholders at once suggests rights holders find that approach acceptable.