Today’s AI music startups, such as Suno and Udio, offer technology that leverages artificial intelligence to create music. But a new company, GRAIhe thinks most people don’t want to use AI to create music from scratch — they’d rather do other things, like remix tunes, share them with friends, or play around with tracks by doing things like changing the style of a track, just for fun.
Of course, whether or not an artist wants to play with their tracks, or to what extent, is something they have to decide.
GRAI Music Lab, now backed by a $9 million seed round, wants to put that control in the hands of artists while also harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to transform the way consumers engage with music.
The company, created by Belarusian founders who previously sold the VOCHI video creation app on Pinterest, is experimenting with new AI music products. Today, this includes apps like the remixing app Music with friends for iOS and another AI music playground for Android. These apps, and others that may ship in the future, will help inform the company how consumers want to engage with music beyond just AI-enabled creation or listening.
“The idea that we’re building the company around this is the next thing in AI music interaction and consumption,” explains GRAI’s co-founder and CEO Ilia Liasunwho is currently based in Poland along with much of the team. He says the main reason the founders started GRAI is that music has become one of the last major consumer categories that isn’t “creator first.”
“We have problems — discovery is broken, listening is passive, and social context is almost non-existent,” notes Liasun.
Meanwhile, he doesn’t think AI will kill artists and labels, as some fear. Instead, the GRAI team believes that AI could lead to new ways of engaging with music beyond just creating melody through genetic AI technology.
The company intends to target its products to Gen Z and Gen Alpha users who tend to discover new music through culture, i.e. friends, fans and through short-form content such as TikTok. These users do not want to be creators or music producers. they just want to participate in some way.
To enhance its social applications, GRAI developed its own taste and participation graph, as well as its own infrastructure. It builds a “derivative pipeline” as well as real-time audio systems that will preserve the identity of the original tracks while allowing them to be transformed.
As Liasun puts it, the company’s goal is to work with artists and their labels to make this kind of activity legal. And the end result is no more unwanted AI music.
“We don’t want to share new genAI slop on the streaming service. We’re actually focusing on the interaction part,” says Liasun.
The idea is that users would be able to play with tracks within GRAI’s apps, perhaps mixing up a favorite tune or changing its style. Ultimately, these modified tracks could create a new source of royalty payments to artists and labels.
The company says it didn’t start building its social apps before going to the labels for permission. Instead, Liasun notes, it speaks to the labels first.
“The main idea here is that we want to build a future system where artists have the ability to opt in and out.” This, he says, is a core belief at GRAI: “first, ask the owners, then integrate.” (Liasun declined to disclose whether it already has agreements or with which companies.)
If this type of music mixing activity becomes popular, GRAI believes it could help people discover new artists and songs outside of larger platforms like Reels, TikTok or YouTube.
With its initial apps, GRAI hopes to get feedback from consumers — even negative — to help it figure out what works and what doesn’t.
THE companyco-founder of KOT Dima Kamarusky and Andrei Avsievich (Chairman), now backed by $9 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Inovo vc. Other investors also participated, including Tensor Ventures, Tiny.VCFlyer One Ventures, a16z Scout Fund and various angels including Andrew Zhai (ML in Cursor, co-founder of Genova Labs, ex-Pinterest). Greg Tkachenko (founder of Unreal Labs, formerly of Snap); Rob Reid (founder of Rhapsody) and Dima Shvets (of MirAI and Reface).
