Musical AI, the pioneering attribution and rights management platform for generative AI, has closed a $4.5M US round led by Heavybit and supported by BDC and Build Ventures. This funding will be used to expand the company’s team, to further develop its successful attribution technology, and to support breakthrough industry deals. 

Musical AI’s innovation lies in its unique attribution technology, the ability to determine what inputs led to particular generative AI outputs. Already successfully deployed, this attribution technology can parse what percentage of a generated output came from which source. 

“Some claim attribution, licensing and AI are incompatible, or that only the largest players in the business can deploy it due to the cost and complexity. We have proved them wrong,” explained Sean Power, CEO and co-founder of Musical AI. “We have made attribution simple and turnkey.” 

“Musical AI’s attribution technology is essential infrastructure that will enable and accelerate every media-focused AI product,” said Jesse Robbins, General Partner at Heavybit. “AI companies now have a seamless way to properly license, train, and use content while ensuring creators are credited and paid properly. As a leading investor in enterprise infrastructure for AI, Heavybit is proud to support Musical AI’s mission to shape the future of music and all media for everyone from artists and rightsholders to developers and innovators.”

To ensure correct attribution, Musical AI has built a platform that serves both sides of AI training, the data providers and AI companies who need data. Rightsholders can monitor, take down, and sunset usage of the works they own. Generative AI companies can access quality licensed data and can use Musical AI’s reports to monitor usage and pay rightsholders on an ongoing basis, right now.

The company has secured partnerships with prominent audio rightsholders, from sound effects libraries (Pro Sound Effects) to production libraries (SourceAudio) to independent distributors (Symphonic Distribution). Its services have already fueled innovation: AI company SoundBreak (formerly SESHY) has used Musical AI to ensure its models were trained on licensed works attributable to the proper rights holders. “Our business is built upon using licensed data sets with attribution for our AI model. Working with Musical AI is a perfect fit,” noted Kevin Griffin, CEO and co-founder SoundBreak AI, better known as the lead vocalist for rock band Better Than Ezra.

“We are demonstrating that we can provide attribution and licensing infrastructure to everyone interested in generative AI. And we can not only license IP but also pay all involved rightsholders accurately and consistently,” Power said. “This ensures the future of human creativity will be enriched, not undermined, by AI.”

About Musical AI

Musical AI (wearemusical.ai) is providing the first real attribution model for generative AI in music. As ardent life-long supporters of the music industry, the Musical AI team saw the AI music ecosystem spiraling into unethical practices. So they fixed it. Musical Al has created an Al Training license management and attribution platform to uplift musicians, respect rightsholders, and unlock creativity for music makers and tech innovators alike.

About Heavybit

Heavybit (heavybit.com) is the leading early-stage investor in enterprise infrastructure. Since 2013 Heavybit has helped launch and scale visionary technical startups from DevSecOps, feature flagging, AI code generation and beyond. Heavybit is hands-on from Day 0, backing founders as they turn code into companies and build the future of software from the bottom up to the top down.