Today’s AI music startups, such as Suno and Udio, offer technology that leverages artificial intelligence for music generation. But new company GRAI believes most people don’t want to use AI to generate music from scratch. They would rather play around with their tracks by remixing them, sharing them with friends, or just changing the style of the track for fun.
Of course, artists have to decide if and to what extent they want someone to mess with their tracks.
Music lab GRAI, currently backed by a $9 million seed round, wants to put that control in the hands of artists while harnessing the power of AI to transform the way consumers interact with music.
The company, founded by Belarusian founders who previously sold video creation app VOCHI to Pinterest, is experimenting with new AI music products. Currently, this includes apps like the remix app Music with Friends for iOS and another AI music playground for Android. These apps, and others that may be released in the future, will help consumers tell the company how they want to engage with music beyond AI-powered creation or listening to music alone.
“What we are building our company on is what can happen next in music AI interaction and consumption,” explains Ilya Liasun, co-founder and CEO of GRAI. She is currently based in Poland with many members of her team. He says the founders started GRAI primarily because music has become one of the last major consumer categories that hasn’t become “creator first.”
“We have a problem: discovery is disconnected, listening is passive, and social context is almost non-existent,” Riason said.
On the other hand, I don’t think AI will kill artists or labels, as some fear. Rather, the team at GRAI believes that AI could lead to new ways to engage with music beyond just creating songs through generative AI technology.
The company aims to target its products at Gen Z and Gen Alpha users, who tend to discover new music through culture: friends, fandoms, and short-form content like TikTok. These users don’t want to be creators or music producers. They just want to be involved in some way.
GRAI has developed its own taste and participation graph, as well as its own infrastructure, to power its social apps. We are building a “derivation pipeline” as well as a real-time audio system that allows for conversion while preserving the identity of the original track.
As Liasun says, the company’s goal is to work with artists and their labels to legitimize this type of activity. The result is no unnecessary AI music.
“We don’t want to share our new genAI slop to streaming services; we’re really focused on the interaction part,” Liasun says.
The idea is that users can manipulate tracks within GRAI’s app, perhaps remixing or changing the style of their favorite song. Ultimately, these modified tracks could create a new source of royalty payments for artists and labels.
The company says it didn’t start building the social app before getting permission from labels. Instead, Liasun points out, they are talking to labels first.
“The main idea here is that we want to build a future system where artists can opt in and out,” he says, which is GRAI’s core belief. “Ask the owners first, then integrate it.” (Reason declined to say whether it already has agreements in place or with which companies.)
GRAI believes that if this type of music remix activity becomes more popular, it could help people discover new artists and songs outside of big platforms like Reels, TikTok, and YouTube.
GRAI hopes to receive consumer feedback (including negative feedback) on its first app so it can determine what works and what doesn’t.
The company, co-founded by CTO Dima Kamirouski and President Andrei Avsievich, is currently 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.VC, Flyer One Ventures, a16z Scout Fund, and various angels such as Andrew Zhai (ML at Cursor, co-founder of Genova Labs, former Pinterest). Greg Tkachenko (founder of Unreal Labs, formerly of Snap). Rob Reid (founder of Rhapsody), Dima Shvets (founder of MirAI and Reface).
