❯ Stability AI Closes $76M Series B as Three Major Labels and Electronic Arts Join

RARE LINEUPAccording to a company announcement, Stability AI, developer of the image-generation model Stable Diffusion, has closed a $76 million Series B round, with the three major record groups — Universal Music, Sony Music, and Warner Music — and gaming company Electronic Arts all entering at once. AMD Ventures and Pacific Alliance Ventures followed on, while existing investors Coatue, Greylock, Sean Parker, and Eric Schmidt added to their positions.

SUIT TO STAKEThese three record labels were the lead plaintiffs in generative-AI music copyright litigation over the past two years; now they have moved to the shareholder side. The turning point was cooperation before investment: Warner announced in November 2025 that it would build artist-friendly AI tools with Stability, and Universal and Electronic Arts each signed agreements to train models on their own catalogs and intellectual property. Stability subsequently launched Stable Audio 3.0, trained on licensed data, along with a digital audio workstation plugin.

PRICE OF LICENSED DATAThis round brings Stability’s cumulative fundraising under its current CEO to $232 million. The amount is not large by today’s AI-fundraising standards, but the structure is unusual — content owners exchanged equity for a voice in training-data terms rather than continuing to fight in court. Other model companies still in litigation will take this deal as a benchmark: an equity partnership comes faster than a verdict, and is more controllable than one.

▪ SIGNALRecord labels’ shift from plaintiffs to shareholders shows rights holders have done the math — revenue sharing beats an injunction.