Suno is best known as the app that lets anyone without instruments or production skill finish a full song in minutes, and more than 100 million people had used it by September 2026. It suits creators who want speed over studio control, not a replacement for a producer's DAW.
Suno is an AI music company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that turns text, audio, image or video prompts into complete songs with vocals and instrumentation. Its September 2026 v6 model family was trained on catalogs licensed from Warner Music, BMG and Believe, not on unlicensed recordings.
Founded: 2022 · HQ: Cambridge, MA, USA · Team: 250+ · CEO: Mikey Shulman · Funding: $775M total raised across a seed/early round, a $250M Series C (Nov 2025, led by Menlo Ventures) and a $400M Series D (Jun 2026, led by Bond Capital, with IVP, Forerunner, Union Square Ventures, Alkeon Capital Management and Quiet) · Valuation: $5.4B (Series D, Jun 2026)
About Suno
Suno was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Mikey Shulman, Georg Kucsko, Martin Camacho and Keenan Freyberg, four former colleagues from Kensho, the financial-technology machine learning company S&P Global acquired in 2018 for more than $500 million. The founders started by building general-purpose audio models rather than a music app: in April 2023 they released Bark, an open source text-to-speech and generative audio model, on GitHub and Hugging Face under the MIT license, and it passed 39,000 GitHub stars. Suno grew its first audience through a Discord bot running its v2 model in mid-2023 before shipping a public web app on December 20, 2023, alongside a distribution deal that put Suno inside Microsoft Copilot as a plugin. The company is incorporated as Suno, Inc., gives 17 Dunster Street in Cambridge as its legal notice address in its Terms of Service, and says on its about page that it works from four offices.
Suno's core product is the Suno app, available on the web, iOS and Android, which turns a text prompt, or an uploaded audio, image or video clip, into a full song with vocals, instrumentation and structure in under a minute. On September 9, 2026 the company replaced its entire model lineup with three new models built with licensed catalog data: v6, the flagship model tuned for polished, genre-consistent output; v6-wild, a more unpredictable model aimed at experimental results; and v6-mini, a faster free-tier model for quick drafts. All three add plain-language section and lyric editing, letting a user rewrite one line without regenerating the whole track, plus multi-song mashups and resampling. Suno says it is retiring every prior model version as the v6 family rolls out, the first time it has shipped more than one flagship model at once. On October 1, 2026 Suno opened a public beta of Speech, which it describes as an audio model that generates a spoken voice and original background music together as one track.
Suno acquired WavTool, a browser-based digital audio workstation, in June 2025 and used its editing engine to build Suno Studio, a multitrack DAW-style tool that launched on September 25, 2025 for Premier subscribers. Studio 2.0 followed on August 13, 2026, one day after Suno announced a licensing alliance with BMG, the second major-label deal behind Warner's. Believe and its TuneCore distribution arm signed a licensing agreement on September 8, 2026, the day before the v6 launch, rounding out the rights partners whose catalogs trained the new models.
Suno's post-money valuation reached $5.4 billion after investors put in $400 million during a June 2026 Series D round led by Bond Capital, with IVP, Forerunner and Union Square Ventures joining previous backers Matrix, Lightspeed and Menlo Ventures; Suno's about page also names NVentures, the venture arm of NVIDIA, among its investors. That followed a $2.45 billion mark set seven months earlier when Menlo Ventures led a $250 million Series C, bringing Suno's total funding to about $775 million.
Suno sells tiered consumer subscriptions rather than API access. Its pricing page, checked October 6, 2026, lists a Free plan with 50 credits a day and no commercial rights, Pro with 2,500 credits a month and commercial use rights, and Premier with 10,000 credits a month plus Suno Studio. Billboard reported Suno's annual recurring revenue at $140 million as of September 30, 2025, up from $50 million at the start of that year, and industry estimates put annualized revenue near $300 million by February 2026. The company has said it is exploring a curated developer API program through an intake form, but as of September 2026 there is no public, self-serve Suno API.
CEO Mikey Shulman was Kensho's first machine learning engineer and later led its ML team before S&P Global's acquisition. Co-founder Georg Kucsko serves as CTO and Martin Camacho as President; a fourth co-founder, Keenan Freyberg, left his COO role in January 2025. Suno's about page lists more than 250 team members across its four offices and says over two-thirds of them are musicians.
Suno labels its generated songs with C2PA Content Credentials, an invisible metadata standard that lets platforms and distributors flag AI-made audio, and publishes a public verification tool for checking a file's provenance. That transparency effort sits alongside unresolved litigation: Universal Music Group and Sony Music are still suing Suno over training-data copyright claims, even as Warner Music Group, which settled its own suit in November 2025, BMG and Believe have all signed licensing deals covering the v6 training set. On September 18, 2026 Universal and Sony filed a second complaint in Boston federal court, alleging that v6 still carries the infringement because Suno built it partly from user preference data and from distilling its earlier models, according to Music Business Worldwide's report on the filing. Suno's privacy notice states that user-generated content is used to train future models, that voice recordings are kept for up to three years after a user's last interaction, and that VeraSafe acts as its GDPR representative for the EU and UK. Formal audit certifications are notably absent from Suno's public security pages: no visible SOC 2 report, ISO 27001 certificate, or HIPAA attestation as of September 2026.
Suno's main rival is Udio, another text-to-song generator also facing major-label litigation, and both compete for the market Suno's leadership describes as turning music into an interactive, social format rather than a one-way stream. Suno's edge is scale and licensing: it says over 100 million people have used the platform and it holds the number-one music-app ranking in 35 countries as of 2026, and among AI music generators it is the only one with signed licensing agreements from Warner, BMG and Believe. Where it loses ground is on professional integration: without a public API, Suno cannot yet be embedded into third-party production pipelines the way traditional sample libraries or stock-music APIs can. Teams that need an API or open weights are better served by Stability AI and its Stable Audio models, MiniMax or Google DeepMind, and voice-only projects by ElevenLabs. Our Suno vs Udio test compares the two apps directly, and the best AI song generators roundup and the AI music generators directory cover the wider field.
Mission
Building a future where anyone can make great music, no instrument needed, just imagination.
Products
- Suno (web, iOS, Android app) (Consumer AI music generation app): https://suno.com
- Suno Studio (Browser-based DAW / generative audio workstation (Premier plan)): https://suno.com/studio
- Bark (Open source text-to-speech / generative audio model (MIT license)): https://github.com/suno-ai/bark
- Speech (beta) (Voice-plus-music audio model, public beta since October 1, 2026): https://suno.com/blog/introducing-speech-beta
Suno Models on HokAI
Links
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Suno founded, and where is it based?
Suno was founded in 2022 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its Terms of Service, effective September 3, 2026, list 17 Dunster Street there as the notice address. Its four co-founders, CEO Mikey Shulman, CTO Georg Kucsko, President Martin Camacho and former COO Keenan Freyberg, met at Kensho. Suno released the open source Bark model in April 2023 and opened its web app to the public on December 20, 2023.
How much funding has Suno raised?
Suno has raised about $775 million since it launched, most recently a $400 million Series D that Bond Capital led in June 2026, pushing its valuation to $5.4 billion. A $250 million Series C the previous November, led by Menlo Ventures, had valued the company at $2.45 billion, with additional backing from Matrix, Lightspeed, IVP, Forerunner and Union Square Ventures. NVIDIA's NVentures fund is also listed among Suno's backers on its own about page.
What products does Suno make in 2026?
Suno's flagship app runs on Android, iOS and the web, letting anyone type a prompt or upload audio, an image or video to get a finished song, now powered by the v6 model family (v6, v6-wild and v6-mini) launched September 9, 2026. Premier subscribers also get Suno Studio, a multitrack DAW-style editor built from the WavTool acquisition that reached version 2.0 in August 2026, and since October 1, 2026 every user can try Speech, a beta that pairs narration with a generated score.
How does Suno handle data privacy and compliance?
Suno has not posted a SOC 2 report, an ISO 27001 certificate, or a HIPAA attestation anywhere on its public trust or security pages. Its privacy notice states that user-submitted content trains future models by default, voice biometrics expire three years after someone's most recent session, and VeraSafe serves as its GDPR representative for EU and UK users.
How do you start using Suno?
Sign up at suno.com and the Free plan gives you a daily credit allowance for personal, non-commercial songs. Paying for Pro is what unlocks commercial use and a monthly credit pool, while Premier adds Suno Studio on top; there is no public developer API as of October 2026.
Top Alternatives
- Stability AI: Pick Stability AI if you want an open-weights audio model to self-host instead of Suno's closed, subscription-only app.
- MiniMax: Pick MiniMax if you need API access to a music-generation model; Suno has no public API as of September 2026.
- Google DeepMind: Pick Google DeepMind if you need music generation bundled inside a broader multimodal AI platform rather than a standalone consumer app.
HokAI guides covering Suno
- Suno vs Udio in 2026: Only One Still Lets You Download Your Songs: Suno vs Udio in 2026: Udio disabled downloads in October 2025, while Suno Pro allows 20 a month with commercial rights. Plans, limits and ownership compared.