Udio is a US generative-AI music platform that produces songs from text prompts. Its corporate entity is Uncharted Labs, Inc., which litigates as "Uncharted Labs, Inc. d/b/a Udio.com" (Sony Music v. Udio (second suit, 2026)). It emerged from stealth on April 10, 2024 with a $10 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, having been founded by former researchers from Google DeepMind (Source: musically.com; voicebot.ai; cybernews.com). Reported seed investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, and the musicians will.i.am and Common (Source: forbes.com). Universal Music Group's own description of the company in October 2025 lists its backers as "a16z, Redpoint, Hanwha, will.i.am, Steve Stoute, Kevin Wall, and many others" (Source: universalmusic.com).
Udio is the closest structural counterpart to Suno: both were sued by the major labels in coordinated June 2024 actions, and both have since taken a different route through the litigation.
Litigation and settlements
The Recording Industry Association of America coordinated parallel suits in June 2024 — against Udio in the Southern District of New York and against Suno in the District of Massachusetts (UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data)). The Udio case settled in two stages.
On October 29, 2025, Universal Music Group and Udio announced that they had settled the copyright infringement litigation and entered recorded-music and publishing license agreements, alongside a "compensatory legal settlement." The announcement describes a subscription platform to launch in 2026, "powered by new cutting-edge generative AI technology that will be trained on authorized and licensed music," in "a licensed and protected environment to customize, stream and share music." UMG chairman and chief executive Sir Lucian Grainge framed the agreements as part of a sequence of UMG AI deals with YouTube, TikTok, Meta, KDDI, KLAY Vision, BandLab, Soundlabs and Pro-Rata (Source: universalmusic.com). Warner Music Group reached its own settlement with Udio in November 2025 (Source: chatgptiseatingtheworld.com).
Sony Music's claims did not settle. In May 2026 Sony moved to add 30,442 works identified through audio fingerprinting of the training data in discovery; the court denied the expansion, and on July 20, 2026 Sony filed a standalone second action asserting 30,117 of the barred recordings, accepted as related to the original case (Sony Music v. Udio (second suit, 2026)).
Leadership
Accounts of who leads the company differ by date and are recorded here rather than reconciled. Coverage of the April 2024 launch names David Ding as chief executive among a founding group of former DeepMind researchers. Universal Music Group's October 29, 2025 announcement quotes "Andrew Sanchez, Co-Founder & CEO of Udio" (Source: universalmusic.com). Whether this reflects a change of chief executive between the two dates, or a difference in how the launch coverage described the founding team, is not established from the sources held.
Position relative to Suno
The two companies took opposite paths from the same starting point. Udio settled with two of the three majors and converted the relationship into a licensing partnership with a licensed-training platform; Suno licensed Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe and launched its "v6" family on that basis, while UMG and Sony continued litigating and filed a second action in September 2026 alleging that v6 is still infringing because it was trained in part on the outputs of the earlier unlicensed models (UMG Recordings v. Suno (2026 — the v6 models)). UMG's licensing deals have been described as limited to companies that keep outputs confined to their own platforms, a set that includes Udio (Source: variety.com).
Open questions
- Whether the UMG-partnered subscription platform launched in 2026 as announced, and on what training corpus.
- The company's funding beyond the seed round, and any valuation. Secondary trackers report a follow-on Series A; no primary confirmation is held.
- The terms of the UMG and Warner settlements, which were not disclosed.
- Whether Sony's second action proceeds to a merits ruling on fair use, which neither settlement produced.
Relationships
- defendant: UMG Recordings v. Uncharted Labs (Udio, 2024) — the original 2024 RIAA-coordinated action, No. 1:24-cv-04777 (S.D.N.Y.), settled by UMG and Warner and still active as to Sony.
- defendant: Sony Music v. Udio (second suit, 2026) — Sony Music's July 2026 standalone action asserting 30,117 recordings.
- related: UMG Recordings v. Suno (AI music training data) — the parallel RIAA-coordinated action against Suno, filed the same month as the original Udio case.
- related: Suno — the closest comparable AI music generator, with the opposite litigation posture.
- related: UMG Recordings v. Suno (2026 — the v6 models) — the 2026 Suno action whose output-laundering theory turns on the same licensed-versus-unlicensed training distinction Udio's settlements were built to resolve.
- instance-of: AI Copyright — training-data licensing and infringement.
- related: Training Data Walls — the label licensing deals as a training-data market.
- deploys-in: Media, Journalism & Entertainment — AI Deployment — music creation and streaming.
- litigates: Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) — the trade body that coordinated the June 2024 actions.