GRAI believes that AI can make music more interactive with people, not replace musicians
Today’s music AI startups, such as Suno and Udio, offer technologies that leverage artificial intelligence in music production. But the new company, GRAI, believes that most people don’t want to use AI to produce music from scratch – they prefer to do other things like remix tunes, share them with friends, or play with tracks by doing things like changing the style of the song, just for fun.
Of course, whether or not an artist wants someone to play their tracks, or to what extent, is something they have to get to decide.
Music lab GRAI, now backed by a $9 million seed round, wants to put that control in the hands of artists, while also harnessing the power of AI to transform the way consumers engage with music.
The company, founded by Belarusian inventors who previously sold their video creation app VOCHI on Pinterest, is experimenting with new AI music products. Today, this includes apps like the Music and Friends remix app for iOS and another AI music platform 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 AI-powered creation or just listening.
“The idea that we’re building a company around is what’s next in collaboration and the use of music AI,” explains GRAI founder and CEO Ilya Liasun, who is currently based in Poland alongside the big group. He says the main reason the founders started GRAI is that music is one of the last major consumer sectors that hasn’t gone “creator-led.”
“We have problems – adoption is broken, listening is impossible, and the social environment is almost non-existent,” Liasun noted.
Meanwhile, he doesn’t think AI will kill artists and labels, as some fear. Rather, the GRAI team believes that AI can lead to new ways of engaging with music, beyond just creating a song with AI-generated technology.
The company aims to target its products to Gen Z and Gen Alpha users who often find new music through culture, meaning friends, fans, and short form content, such as TikTok. These users do not want to be creators or producers of music; they just want to participate in some way.
To implement its social programs, GRAI has developed its taste and participation graph as well as its infrastructure. Build a “derivative pipeline” and real-time audio systems that will preserve the ownership of the original tracks while allowing them to be modified.
As Liasun puts it, the company’s goal is to work with artists and their labels to legitimize this type of work. And the result is not unwanted AI music.
“We don’t want to share the new genAI slop on a streaming service. We’re actually focusing on the interactive part,” Liasun said.
The idea is that users can play with tracks within GRAI apps, maybe remix a favorite song, or change its style. Ultimately, those modified tracks can create a new source of payments for artists and labels.
The company says it didn’t start building its social media apps before approaching the labels for approval. Instead, Liasun notes, it’s talking to the labels first.
“The big idea here is that we want to create a system for the future where artists will be able to come in and out.” That, he says, is a core belief at GRAI: “start, ask the owners, and put it together.” (Liasun declined to disclose whether it still has existing deals with any companies.)
If this type of music compilation becomes popular, GRAI believes it can help people discover new artists and songs outside of the big platforms like Reels, TikTok, or YouTube.
With its first apps, GRAI is hoping to get consumer feedback — even negative feedback — to help it figure out what works and what doesn’t.
The company, co-founded by CTO Dima Kamarouski and Andrei Avsievich (President), is now backed by $9 million in seed funding in a joint round 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 in Cursor, co-founder of Genova Labs, ex-Pinterest); Greg Tkachenko (founder of Unreal Labs, ex-Snap); Rob Reid (Founder of Rhapsody), and Dima Shvets (of MirAI and Reface).
