Modulate raises $25 million as AI-music detection demand grows

Modulate, the Boston audio-intelligence company, has raised $25 million in a funding round led by Future Ventures, with existing backers Hyperplane and Lakestar participating. The round brought its total funding to $60 million. The company said the money would support AI and machine-learning research, product and engineering work, developer relations and partnerships. Modulate has 40 to 45 employees and plans to add 10 more, with the hires intended to strengthen model-building work. The financing comes after Modulate launched its AI Music Detection API in June. The service is aimed at streaming platforms, distributors, rights organisations and music-technology companies seeking to identify AI-generated audio, including uploads that have not been disclosed or reliably labelled at source. The API analyses audio directly, returning probabilities for AI-generated vocals and instrumentals in segments, as well as an overall verdict for the full file. It uses separate models to identify whether a frame contains music, speech or both, and to assess synthetic vocals and instrumentals. Modulate says it can distinguish AI-generated tracks from music made by humans but digitally altered, and can identify music that uses AI only in selected sections. Modulate sells the service on a self-serve basis for $0.07 per hour of audio. Its pitch to distributors, streaming services and clearance teams is that tracks can be flagged at ingestion, before AI uploads dilute royalty payments for human artists. The company said at launch that major labels and distribution platforms had shown interest, but it had not named a music-industry customer. In internal tests against leading music-generation models, including Suno 5.5, Modulate said its music detector reached 95% precision across 76 genres. That measure is distinct from the company’s 98.9% result for synthetic-voice or deepfake detection on public benchmark data. Separately, Modulate’s broader Velma platform offers transcription, emotional analysis, deepfake detection, AI music detection and policy enforcement for voice agents. Its models analyse more than 10 million hours of audio a month and have processed more than 600 million hours in total. Modulate was founded in 2017 by Carter Huffman and Mike Pappas, initially working on voice modulation for games before moving into voice moderation; Huffman is now chief executive and Pappas chairman. Streaming services are confronting a surge in AI-generated uploads. Deezer said it was receiving nearly 90,000 fully AI-generated tracks a day in June, with such tracks accounting for more than half of new deliveries on peak days. WIPO had previously reported Deezer’s estimate that about 20,000 AI-generated tracks, representing 18% of daily uploads, reached the service in April 2025. Platforms have taken differing approaches. Deezer has operated an in-house detection tool since the start of 2025 and licenses it to the wider industry, while TIDAL said in June that it would tag fully AI-generated tracks and stop them earning royalties. Qobuz announced its own AI-music detection system in February. Apple Music requires Transparency Tags where AI created a material portion of a delivery, whereas Spotify’s AI Credits rely on disclosure from a label or distributor, and Spotify has said that a missing credit does not establish that AI was not used. The industry has also proposed common labels for fully and partially AI-generated music, although Billboard reported that implementation could take time. The proposal uses separate symbols for tracks generated by AI and those with more limited AI-assisted expressive elements.