Sonilo has raised $11 million in a funding round led by B Capital, with participation from Redpoint. The investment will support its technology for generating music and sound effects matched to video.
The company has earmarked the funding for:
- Compute infrastructure to scale model performance.
- Go-to-market expansion across creator and developer platforms.
- Growth in music licensing.
Generating audio from video and text
Sonilo develops proprietary music and sound models built around video. Its Sound World Model combines video interpretation, audio generation and timing alignment in a multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) system.
The model uses a scene’s timing, movement and emotional progression to generate accompanying audio. Creators can supply footage, text instructions or both to produce a synchronized soundtrack intended for commercial use.
Shawn Song, Sonilo’s CEO and co-founder, said text-based audio tools can require creators to spend hours describing music, aligning it with footage and selecting sound effects for a single piece of content.
Song said Sonilo instead analyzes footage frame by frame, using its pacing, emotion and narrative to generate music and effects suited to the scene.
The team’s approach draws on years of developing recommendation and generation systems at platform scale. Sonilo says creator workflows guide model development, rather than industry benchmarks.
Creator tools and distribution
The founding team aims to combine multimodal AI research, music licensing expertise and product development centered on how creators work.
Daisy Cai, general partner at B Capital, cited Sonilo’s text and video input options, Song’s expertise in multimodal music generation and the team’s attention to creator workflows as reasons for backing the company.
Cai said B Capital expects generative audio to become an essential component of video technology built around AI.
Sonilo also provides AI dubbing with synchronized lip movements, designed to help short-drama and content studios adapt videos for different languages without manual post-production.
Early distribution partners include AI creator aggregator TapNow and ComfyUI.
Music licensing and consumer launch
Sonilo is developing its commercial music infrastructure using licensed source material, with Shutterstock among its early licensing partners.
The company says its models are trained on licensed music datasets, with licensing fees and revenue shares paid to rights holders and artists.
Sonilo is finalizing master recording and publishing agreements with major rights organizations. Those deals are expected to close in the coming weeks.
A consumer app is planned for the fourth quarter, giving individual creators direct access to Sonilo’s video-to-music generation technology.
