The AI Music Company Suno Hit $300M in Revenue. It's Also Being Sued by Almost Everyone.
Suno just crossed $300 million in annual recurring revenue and 2 million paid subscribers. It got there in two years.
CEO Mikey Shulman posted the numbers on LinkedIn in late February, two years after the platform launched. Over 100 million people have used Suno since then.
Three months ago, the company reported $200 million in annual revenue when it closed a $250 million Series C at a $2.45 billion valuation. Going from $200 million to $300 million in roughly 90 days is fast for any company, let alone one that's still in active litigation with two major labels.
The platform generates about 7 million songs per day. Anyone can make one. You type a prompt, and Suno produces a finished track in seconds, no musical background required. A woman in Mississippi used it to turn her poetry into an R&B song that went viral and landed her a reported $3 million record deal. That's the range of what people are doing with it.
Warner Music Group settled with Suno in November and signed a licensing deal. Sony and Universal haven't. Both are still litigating, alleging Suno trained its models on copyrighted recordings without permission. European rights organizations are also pursuing claims. Earlier this week, leaders from the Music Artist Coalition, the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, and the Artist Rights Institute published an open letter calling Suno a "brazen smash and grab."
At the same time, Suno has been quietly hiring from inside the industry. Former Merlin CEO Jeremy Sirota joined as Chief Commercial Officer. A former WMG executive is now Chief Music Officer. A former Spotify exec recently came on to lead artist partnerships. It's a strange position to be in: recruiting people whose former employers are suing you.
The unresolved question isn't whether Suno is growing. The question is what happens if Sony and Universal win. Udio, Suno's closest competitor, already settled with both. Suno hasn't, and whatever terms eventually get negotiated will probably set the standard for how AI music platforms license content going forward.
At $300 million in revenue and two years old, Suno isn't an experiment anymore. I think the licensing model wins eventually. The labels know they can't shut this down, and they'd rather get paid.
