Major record labels, AMD back $76M round for Stability AI

AI

Artificial intelligence developer Stability AI Ltd. today announced that it has raised $76 million in funding from a group of prominent investors.

The consortium included Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, the world’s three largest record labels. They were joined by more than a half-dozen others including AMD Ventures.

London-based Stability AI rose to prominence in 2022 with a hit open-source image generator called Stable Diffusion. Over the subsequent years, it expanded its open-source portfolio with models optimized to generate three-dimensional renderings, video and audio. The latter use case is presumably what led the world’s top record labels to back its funding round.

Stability AI released its newest family of audio generation models, Stable Audio 3.0, in May. The series comprises three open-source models and a paid algorithm that is accessible via a cloud-based application programming interface. Users can generate audio snippets up to six minutes and 20 seconds in length. 

Stable Audio 3.0 is based on a diffusion transformer architecture. Such algorithms generate audio by creating a file with random noise and then gradually substituting the noise with legible sounds. Usually, that process unfolds over a large number of steps. Stability AI compressed the workflow into a single step to speed up audio generation.

When users provide an AI model with audio snippets they wish to edit, it turns the files into a so-called latent space. That’s a mathematical structure capable of representing data in a compressed, hardware-efficient form. Stable Audio 3.0 generates latent spaces using a mechanism dubbed a semantic-acoustic autoencoder. Stability AI says the technology, which incorporates elements of the transformer architecture, speeds up inference without reducing output quality.

Two of the three record labels that backed today’s round maintain partnerships with Stability AI. Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group are working with the company to develop AI-powered music production tools. 

Last year, Stability AI signed a similar technical partnership with Electronic Arts Inc., one of the world’s largest video game developers. The later company was also among the contributors to today’s round. Electronics Arts hopes to use Stability AI’s image generation models to speed up the work of its game designers.

Stability AI released its newest open-source image generator, Stable Diffusion 3.5, in 2024. However, the company hasn’t exited the graphic design segment. In April, it launched a cloud service called Brand Studio that marketing teams can use to generate and edit visual assets.

Stability AI will use the proceeds from its funding round to develop additional products for creative professionals. The company also plans to grow its applied research and professional service teams.