Suno Eyes $5 Billion Valuation in Series D Funding Round

AI music generation startup Suno is preparing to close a Series D funding round that would value the company at more than $5 billion, according to reports from Music Business Worldwide and Forbes.

The round, expected to close within weeks, would raise more than $250 million and more than double Suno's valuation from its November 2025 Series C round, which valued the company at $2.45 billion post-money.

That's a remarkable trajectory for a four-year-old company operating in one of the most legally contentious corners of the AI industry. Every major record label has sued Suno alleging copyright violations from training its models on copyrighted music. Warner Music Group settled in November, but Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment remain in active litigation.

Despite the legal headwinds, the numbers tell a different story. In February, Suno CEO and co-founder Mikey Shulman disclosed the platform has reached 2 million paid subscribers and $300 million in annual recurring revenue. Over 100 million people have used Suno to create music since its public rollout in 2023.

The subscription model is straightforward: a free tier, a Pro plan at $10 per month ($8 annually), and a Premier plan at $30 per month ($24 annually). Users type text prompts describing the music they want, and Suno's technology generates a song. The company claims users create more than 7 million songs daily—the equivalent of Spotify's entire catalog.

Shulman told Forbes last week the company is the "Ozempic of the music industry," adding that "everybody's on it and nobody wants to talk about it." The comparison is apt: addictive, ubiquitous, and deeply controversial among traditional stakeholders.

Compute power has been Suno's biggest expense since January 2024. Materials from the Series C round, obtained by Billboard, showed the company earmarked 30% of capital for computing power, 20% for mergers and acquisitions, 20% for discovery, 20% for marketing, 15% for data, and 5% for partnerships. (These percentages add up to 110%, which suggests either aggressive budgeting or a typo in the deck.)

The Series D capital will likely follow a similar allocation pattern. Hardware, memory, and energy costs for AI inference are not exactly cheap (a problem that has plagued users for years, frankly).

Multiple music industry investors are participating in the latest round, according to sources. Most have kept their involvement private due to the controversies surrounding Suno. One exception is Hallwood Media, the firm launched by Neil Jacobson, former President of Universal Music Group's Geffen Records. Hallwood Media signed the first record deal for an artist who creates music primarily using Suno.

Hallwood's investment arm, Hallwood Media Ventures, is led by other ex-UMG executives including Chuck Ciongoli and Mike Biggane. This insider participation signals that some industry veterans see value in the model despite the legal risks.

The funding round comes as Suno's relationship with the music industry remains turbulent. In April, the Financial Times reported that talks between Suno and both Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment had made little progress. A person involved in the negotiations told the newspaper: "We have ongoing engagement, but there is no path forward with the current proposal."

Last week, French digital music company Believe and its global platform for self-releasing artists, TuneCore, unveiled a significant update to their Generative AI policy. The update automatically blocks distribution of AI-generated tracks partly or fully produced on unlicensed "pirate studios." Believe's definition of "pirate studios" includes Suno.

Believe CEO Denis Ladegaillerie told MBW: "Two or three months ago, everyone still thought Suno, and some of the other still-unlicensed studios, might yet get licensed by the industry's biggest rights-holders. The reality now is it's unlikely, at least for the models they've already trained on. Which means the Gen-AI content made on those models is illegal, and is going to stay illegal, for the foreseeable future."

That's a stark assessment from a platform that distributes music globally. If TuneCore and similar distributors continue blocking Suno-generated tracks, the company's growth could face distribution bottlenecks regardless of how much capital it raises.

Suno continues to expand its offerings despite these challenges. In November, the company acquired live music and concert-discovery platform Songkick from Warner Music Group. On April 30, Suno formally assumed control of Songkick user data, sending emails to Songkick users confirming that personal data held by the platform "will be transferred to Suno, who will become the controller responsible for that data going forward."

The company has posted a job listing for a General Manager of Songkick, describing the platform as having "a well-established artist and venue data layer" and "a massive untapped opportunity to reimagine what live music discovery experiences look like when powered by AI." The role reports to Suno Chief Music Officer Paul Sinclair, the former General Manager and EVP of Atlantic Records, who joined the AI company in July 2025.

Shulman told Forbes the biggest future opportunities involve developing ways for artists to connect with fans. He suggested an artist like Taylor Swift could release an interactive version of an album with lyrics or samples fans could access with an extra fee, or release unfinished versions of songs fans can use AI to complete. He sees a future where there isn't a distinction between AI-generated music and non-AI-generated songs.

In February, a coalition of artist representatives published an open letter titled "Say No to Suno," describing the company as a "brazen smash and grab" platform and accusing it of using "unauthorized AI platform machinery trained on human artists' work." More than 200 high-profile musicians, including Billie Eilish and Katy Perry, signed the letter.

Suno has defended itself from copyright claims by comparing its AI training to "listening to a lot of music and learning from it," Shulman said to Forbes. Whether courts agree with that framing remains to be seen.

Forbes estimated last week that Suno generated $150 million in revenue in 2025, and $25 million in revenue in February alone. The company landed a spot on Forbes' 2026 AI 50 list.

The Series D valuation of $5 billion would make Suno one of the most valuable AI startups in the music space. But whether investors can monetize that valuation without resolving the copyright litigation is the real question. Capital can fund compute power and acquisitions. It cannot buy immunity from lawsuits.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn