FT : Europe’s new guard in private markets

FT : Europe’s new guard in private markets
Over the past couple of years the leadership of Europe’s largest private capital firms has turned over.

CVC Capital Partners is the latest to shake up its top ranks. The FT revealed on Tuesday that the Amsterdam-listed and London-based private equity group hired Todd Sisitsky from rival TPG to become co-chief executive.

Sisitsky will join CVC in the first quarter of 2028 and will become co-chief alongside Peter Rutland, the group’s president and head of financial services investments. The pair will succeed Rob Lucas, who has led CVC since its initial public offering in 2024.

CVC joins its European peers who have named fresh leaders as they vie to compete with their larger US rivals.

Swiss private equity manager Partners Group announced last week it would replace chief executive David Layton with co-CEOs Roberto Cagnati and Juri Jenkner.

Last year the Swedish buyout group EQT and the London-headquartered firm Cinven both replaced their CEOs. And in 2024 Permira named a pair of co-CEOs to succeed Kurt Björklund, who steered its revival from the 2008 crisis.

As the new guard takes over atop private markets in Europe, the giants of US private capital have much more entrenched leadership.

Blackstone’s chief is Stephen Schwarzman, though its fleet-footed president Jonathan Gray in effect tends to the day-to-day management of the firm. Marc Rowan has solidified himself atop Apollo Global Management as it becomes an insurance-funded lending goliath.

KKR’s succession from co-founders Henry Kravis and George Roberts is now half a decade old with co-CEOs Scott Nuttall and Joseph Bae steering a steady ship. Harvey Schwartz has also stabilised the once-fractious Carlyle.

Even the long-term leadership of TPG seems clarified now too. Sisitsky was second in command to chief executive Jon Winkelried. But with his heir apparent departing, Winkelried’s grip on the technology-focused PE investor seems clear.

Sisitsky joined TPG in 2003 and has become one of the most prominent healthcare investors on Wall Street. While CVC and TPG are similar sizes, DD can see an appeal for Sisitsky to join what is considered one of Europe’s top investment firms.

CVC is still seen in the PE world as a firm that can earn high returns, as many other firms have become “beta” players with returns that track the market. Its less diversified operations aren’t suffering from a private credit hangover. CVC is on the offensive now after acquiring credit manager Marathon Asset Management earlier this year.

But the buyout group has struggled to win over public market investors since its 2024 public offering, with its share price little changed and its size just a fraction of US rivals.

Sisitsky and his future co-CEO Rutland have a nice canvas to work with and easy levers to pull if they are heavily incentivised in stock, like pursuing a dual listing of the company in the more richly valued US markets.

FT : CVC hires TPG’s second-in-command Todd Sisitsky as co-CEO Private equity gr

CVC hires TPG’s second-in-command Todd Sisitsky as co-CEO
Private equity group brings on executive as part of succession plan for chief Rob Lucas

CVC Capital Partners has hired rival TPG’s second-highest-ranking executive Todd Sisitsky as co-chief executive of the Amsterdam-listed private equity group as it prepares for its current head Rob Lucas to step down.

Sisitsky will join CVC in the first quarter of 2028 and will become co-chief alongside Peter Rutland, the group’s president and head of financial services investments, the company said late on Tuesday, confirming an earlier FT report.

The pair will succeed Lucas, who has led CVC since its initial public offering in 2024. The company has been seeking potential CEOs as part of a long-planned succession, the FT reported last year.

Sisitsky will also become chair of the group’s partner board as part of the succession plan. CVC said the leadership moves reflected its “well-established approach to succession planning at the most senior levels of the firm”.

Lucas will remain with CVC after he steps down as chief executive and will remain a “key man” on many of its private equity funds, the buyout group said.

Sisitsky’s hiring will bring in an outsider to the group’s top ranks, a rare move for a company famed in private equity circles for its insular and competitive culture.

CVC was spun out of Citigroup in 1993 by seven co-founders who have stepped away from operational roles in recent years. The co-founders built a competitive culture in which partners whose deals are not completed are forced to return potential incentive pay, the FT has reported.

Sisitsky had been at the US-based TPG since 2003 and is one of the most prominent healthcare investors on Wall Street. He will join CVC as it diversifies beyond its roots in private equity after the acquisition of credit manager Marathon Asset Management, infrastructure investor DIF and secondaries investor Glendower Capital.

At TPG, Sisitsky helped lead some of the company’s most lucrative deals including its takeovers of healthcare groups such as Par Pharmaceuticals, Allogene and Iqvia. He rose quickly from the lead of a healthcare sector to president and head of its global private equity operations to become second-in-command behind TPG chief executive Jon Winkelried.

Rutland, a near two-decade veteran of CVC, has led some of its most lucrative recent deals such as its acquisition of Pension Insurance Corporation, which was sold for a multibillion-dollar gain to Apollo-backed Athora earlier this year.

TPG said in a filing earlier on Tuesday that Sisitsky would step down as president and board member, “effective immediately, and depart the firm”.

While CVC manages more than $200bn in assets across equity and credit strategies and is one of Europe’s leading private markets firms, it has struggled to catch up to larger rivals Blackstone, Apollo and KKR.

Its share price of just above €14 is at the same level as its IPO price and its market capitalisation is about $17bn, a fraction of the size of US giants.

FT : US-China borrowing costs diverge to widest level ever Rising Treasury yield

US-China borrowing costs diverge to widest level ever
Rising Treasury yields threaten to accelerate shift in capital flows between world’s two largest economies

The gap between benchmark borrowing costs in the US and China has reached its widest level ever, threatening to accelerate a shift in capital flows between the world’s two biggest economies.

The spread between 10-year bond yields in the US and China rose to a record 3.17 percentage points on Thursday as their economies faced divergent inflation outlooks.

Higher Treasury yields, which translate to lower bond prices, are likely to stoke capital outflows that Beijing is rushing to contain.

“The risk is that if interest rate differentials become wider and wider then that will draw capital away from China,” said Mansoor Mohi-uddin, chief economist at Bank of Singapore.

Chinese bond yields have been grinding lower as the country grapples with a chronic lack of credit demand and deflationary pressures. The yield on 10-year Chinese government bonds stood at 1.68 per cent on Thursday, while the equivalent US Treasury yield reached 4.85 per cent, its highest level since 2023.

“You can call China the most profitable and successful bond market in the world among major benchmarks, possibly for the wrong reasons,” said John Woods, chief investment officer for Asia at Lombard Odier. “Prices are rallying hard largely because of underlying disinflation and economic conditions.”


Meanwhile, yields in the US have been climbing on expectations that the Federal Reserve will begin raising interest rates in response to inflationary pressures.

Treasury yields jumped to their highest levels in almost three years on Wednesday after Treasury secretary Scott Bessent’s $6bn buyback plan disappointed investors.

Low Chinese bond yields have led to an explosion in offshore renminbi borrowing as multinational companies and foreign governments take advantage of China’s low-rate environment to borrow cheaply, boosting Beijing’s attempts to increase use of its currency.

But the relatively higher Treasury yields are adding to capital outflow pressure. Chinese authorities have stepped up efforts this year to collect taxes from overseas capital gains and have scrutinised the Hong Kong-based insurers and brokerages that mainland Chinese residents often use to move savings offshore.

Last month, China raised the quota for domestic institutional investors to invest overseas by $6.8bn, in a move analysts said was aimed at reducing outflows through unofficial channels.

“They want to make sure it’s happening within the supervised channels,” said Winnie Wu, head of Asia-Pacific equity strategy research at Bank of America Global Research.

But Wu added that the $6.8bn increase dwarfed the outflow pressures China was facing, noting the country’s financial account outflow was nearly $800bn last year.

“We’re talking about tightening the outflow by hundreds of billions but opening the front gate by billions of US dollars,” she said.

FT : Starbucks bets $1bn on coffee house antidote to lonely digital lives

Starbucks bets $1bn on coffee house antidote to lonely digital lives
Easy chairs and rugs are part of chief executive Brian Niccol’s plan to make shops more inviting and boost sales

Starbucks is betting $1bn that an environment with leather armchairs, rugs and hardback books can lure back customers willing to buy one of its $6 lattes and perhaps linger long enough to have another. 

The world’s biggest coffee shop chain is making the investment so that as many as 9,000 cafés feel more like a “community lounge”, even serving as an oasis for “lonely and disconnected” lives lived online.

The aesthetic jettisons design austerity that followed the Covid-19 pandemic and contrasts with strategies of fast-growing rivals such as Dutch Bros, 7 Brew and Luckin Coffee, which sell beverages from small shops with few to zero chairs. 

Starbucks has already added about 25,000 chairs, some with names such as Viola and Frasca, said Dawn Clark, Starbucks’ senior vice-president of coffee house design and concepts.

“The world is coming back to this, being in a place and meeting with humans, not being distant,” Clark told the FT.  

Starbucks is under pressure to increase receipts and improve profitability. After a dismal two years, US same-store sales have risen solidly in 2026, including a 7.9 per cent increase in the latest quarter. Making shops more inviting is part of chief executive Brian Niccol’s turnaround plan, along with faster and friendlier service and new menu items.

“In an age when an unprecedented amount of life takes place online, and a record number of people report feeling lonely and disconnected, Starbucks has doubled down on human connection and customer service,” Starbucks said in an update last month.

Niccol has also set out $2bn in cost savings over the next two years. The company was spending about $150,000 per store on the store improvements, instead of as much as 10 times that sum in past renovations, Clark said.  

What Starbucks executives call “uplifts” can be completed at night without forcing temporary store closures. Niccol has said they have driven customer traffic “at a fraction of the cost of earlier remodels”.

The programme is in full swing in Los Angeles, one of Starbucks’ largest and most competitive markets. Since 2025, more than 200 of the metro area’s stores have been redone. 

“We’re not focused on changing major functional issues. We’re really focused on creating a warmer and more welcoming experience for customers,” said Clark, a professional architect.

At a café in Beverly Hills, customers sat on a variety of low-slung easy chairs, a banquette and a settee that had electrical outlets in its base to power laptops. 

A set of shelves containing books, ceramics and houseplants divided the room in two. Framed pictures hung on a wall repainted sage green. The rugs, drapes and mirror were new for a Starbucks store, Clark said. Before the changes, the shop featured fewer seats and standing tables with walls painted taupe.

But some things did not change, including the floor tiles and countertops, because they were expensive to replace. The banquette seat had new cushions but its scuffed wooden back remained. Clark said in an interview at the store that there was a “difference between patina and damage. The idea that something is worn doesn’t mean we should get rid of it.”

In April Starbucks hired Stephen Piacentini as chief coffee house design and development officer. He previously held a similar role at Chipotle Mexican Grill when Niccol led the burrito chain. 

Starbucks last month disclosed more than 100 lay-offs in its coffee house design and development division. A spokesperson said the cuts would not slow down the pace of uplifts. The company is separately hiring a director of design and construction sourcing to oversee more than $1bn in spending while “delivering measurable cost savings”, according to a job advertisement.

Being an inviting “third place” to spend time in between home and work has long been a part of Starbucks’ pitch to consumers. 

Starbucks halted sit-down service when the pandemic struck in 2020. When it resumed, social distancing led some chairs to be removed and never replaced.

A push to accommodate customers making quick counter pick-ups using the Starbucks app also coarsened its cosy feel. Mobile orders make up a third of US transactions, more than double the share in 2019. 

“They tried to eliminate as much as possible the tables, the seating areas, even the condiment stations,” said Danilo Gargiulo, restaurant analyst at Bernstein. “It was not really a place that invited you to linger around and spend some time with others. It was a place to essentially optimise your transaction very anonymously.” 

About 1,500 uplifts will be complete by the end of September, Niccol has told analysts. He plans to expand the programme in future years to 8,000 or 9,000 of more than 11,000 company-operated North American stores, a target that would cost at least $1.2bn at $150,000 a store.

Brian Gorski, a 54-year-old owner of a Los Angeles personal training company, said he visits a Starbucks on Venice Boulevard at 5am. The new look, which includes a woven pendant lamp and a plastic ficus plant, was “fantastic”, he said. “Every single person in line is like, ‘This is nicer than my house!’” 


But at 7am he leaves Starbucks to meet friends at an independent shop called 310 Coffee, where the plants contain chlorophyll and photos of customers’ and employees’ dogs are taped to the pastry case. 

He said many Starbucks customers seemed in a hurry. “There’s no cross-pollination, no conversation. You can’t just say hello to the person next to you,” he said. When the FT visited the Venice Boulevard Starbucks in the afternoon, customers were seated and chatting.

Starbucks’ competitors in the Los Angeles area include independent shops, local chains such as The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and national brands such as La Colombe and Blank Street, which opened in the Studio City neighbourhood in August. Cheaper options include McDonald’s and Dunkin’. 

“They’re getting hit by the craft folks like us. And they’re getting hit by the convenient and drive-through folks,” said Mark Wain, co-founder and president of Los Angeles-based Caffe Luxxe, which took over a storefront vacated by Starbucks last year. Caffe Luxxe coffee shops lacked WiFi by design to encourage socialising, Wain said.

Clark said the new designs aimed to allow diverse uses, from working on laptops to looking for company. “Who knows, maybe they’ll strike up a longtime friendship. Or sometimes they’re just in their own space. But they’re comfortable to hang out there,” she said.

FT : The Dorchester hotel to sell Qatari sheikh’s car over unpaid £460,000 bill

The Dorchester hotel to sell Qatari sheikh’s car over unpaid £460,000 bill
Member of ruling family ran up debt at Mayfair institution equivalent to stay of up to several months

One of London’s grandest hotels, The Dorchester, has secured a court order to sell a car belonging to a member of Qatar’s ruling family, after he ran up an unpaid bill of £458,000.

The five-star Mayfair institution sued Sheikh Nasser bin Abdullah al-Thani in March over outstanding payments for rooms, other room charges and interest.

The sheikh is a member of the sprawling ruling al-Thani family but has no government or state role. He was vice-president at Málaga football club where his father has been the majority shareholder.

The County Court at Central London found in July in favour of The Dorchester’s claim to recoup “the sum of £198,180.33 and interest of £3,266.89 (on the hotel room and room charges) and £256,627.86” from the sheikh, according to court documents seen by the FT.

In a separate order, District Judge Michael Javaherian also gave the hotel permission to sell the sheikh’s vehicle: a 2011 Fiat 500 Abarth Tributo Ferrari, a limited edition compact city car, accented with racing stripes.

Its sale is unlikely to significantly reduce al-Thani’s debt: the model has commanded a median average resale price of £23,500 since 2020, according to The Classic Valuer website.

Rooms at The Dorchester range from about £1,000 a night to more than £8,000.

That makes al-Thani’s debt equivalent to a stay of up to several months, although the hotel imposes a 30-day maximum on continuous bookings for some rooms.

Al-Thani did not attend the court hearing or send legal representation. The court papers listed his address as Al Wajiba Palace in Doha.

The sheikh’s lawyers told the FT: “Sheikh Al Thani has only recently become aware of these proceedings, which were not properly served on him. The sum sought by the Dorchester hotel is disputed and Sheikh Al Thani will be taking steps to set aside the judgment.”

Al-Thani’s time at Málaga FC proved turbulent. A judge removed him, his two brothers and his father from management positions at the club in 2020, following allegations of financial impropriety. 

That came after a spree of unsustainable spending had seen Málaga flirt with the continent’s elite before being temporarily banned from European competitions for financial breaches, then relegated to Spain’s third division. The club was promoted again to the top division this year. 


His Instagram profile confirms his fondness for luxury fast cars, boasting photos of a white Mirage GT, a limited edition of 25 cars based on the Porsche Carrera GT, and a Lamborghini Aventador in purple with orange accents. In 2015 al-Thani posted a picture of the latter car parked at The Dorchester. 

His interest in top hotels is also borne out by his social media, which features photos posted by him from the Mandarin Oriental in Geneva, the Shangri-La in Paris and the Jumeirah Messilah Beach Hotel & Spa in Kuwait.

The Qatari ruling family has extensive links to London luxury hotels. Qatari investors led by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, Qatar’s former prime minister, control Maybourne Hotel Group, which operates high-end hotels including Claridge’s, The Connaught and The Berkeley.

The Dorchester is owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, an arm of the government of Brunei.

The Dorchester and its solicitors Gordons Partnership declined to comment.

FT : London credit investor Arini hit by Europe’s thorniest credit trades Exposu

London credit investor Arini hit by Europe’s thorniest credit trades
Exposure to Aston Martin and Altice International has weighed on fund run by 35-year-old Hamza Lemssouguer


London-based credit investor Arini Capital Management has found itself on the wrong side of a number of Europe’s thorniest distressed debt trades, pushing its flagship strategy to a loss during a year when two of its top traders have left.

Arini, which manages $22bn, has been one of Europe’s fastest-growing hedge funds and quickly developed a reputation for using leverage to take big concentrated bets on the debt of struggling corporates.

Founded in 2021 by former Credit Suisse high-yield trader Hamza Lemssouguer, the contrarian approach has earned its master fund big profits, gaining 27 per cent in 2023, 21 per cent in 2024 and 10 per cent last year.

But a series of soured bets has driven the 35-year-old Moroccan’s flagship fund to a loss of more than 8 per cent since the start of the year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The master fund — Arini’s largest — lost almost 8 per cent in July and close to 1 per cent in August, as positions in the debt of companies including Aston Martin and Altice International have deteriorated.

The fund’s largest single-name loss in July came from a bet on the debt of Altice International, part of Franco-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi’s telecoms empire.

Altice International’s bonds plummeted at the end of last year, when Drahi shifted the group’s most valuable assets out of the pool of collateral pledged to creditors. Arini was among the group of senior bondholders that banded together in negotiations with the company and accused it of triggering a default. 

But in July, a subset of the senior creditor group — including Arini and Silver Point Capital — began pushing for a deal that would give them a preferential payout compared with their peers in any restructuring, as a reward for being willing to litigate against Altice. News of the deal caused Altice’s bonds to fall further, forcing Arini to mark a loss for the month.

Arini was hit by another asset shift in July, when heavily indebted carmaker Aston Martin stripped its most valuable naming and branding rights from the reach of creditors owed more than £1.3bn, causing its bonds to plummet.

Arini is one of the company’s largest bondholders, owning hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of Aston Martin’s debt. The assets were pledged to private credit firm HPS, as part of a contentious £550mn new financing deal that cut out existing creditors.

During a difficult year for the fund, a number of senior traders including US chief executive Gavin Yates and Ben Elliott, another member of the investment team, have departed. Yates is set to join Citadel.

The fund sought to reassure investors in a letter about the July performance, telling them that its expectations about worst-case scenarios and timelines for its positions to come good were unchanged, and that it had doubled down on its highest-conviction trades.

It has bounced back from similar mark-to-market losses before.

Arini reminded investors that it shed 8 per cent over two months in early 2024, then gained about 29 per cent over the following 12 months. The fund also lost 15 per cent over a few months shortly after its launch in 2022, but over its first four years, Arini earned a return of 73 per cent.

Alongside its flagship fund, Arini also runs other smaller strategies where performance this year has been better. Its credit opportunities fund is up 12 per cent year to date and a direct lending strategy has returned 7 per cent so far this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Arini also has an asset-backed finance strategy.

Arini’s volatility stems from large bets on some of the most perilous situations in credit, often becoming the largest bondholder of a distressed company, holding such a large size that its position is harder to sell out of. When these bonds fall sharply in price, Arini risks taking large losses.

As well as owning large chunks of debt, the hedge fund has also garnered a reputation for trading in the opaque market of credit default swaps (CDS), buying and selling protection against defaults by heavily indebted companies.

Arini was one of the largest holders of bonds issued by glass and packaging conglomerate Ardagh before taking ownership of the group in a restructuring last year. It had also sold large amounts of Ardagh CDS to investors seeking protection against a default in a trade gone wrong, however, resulting in it having to pay out large sums to investors who bought the contracts.

It also took losses in July from two telecoms positions, according to people familiar with the matter: an equity stake in US group EchoStar and a large position in the bonds of Apollo-backed Brightspeed, which has since warned of its ability to continue as a going concern.

Bloomberg first reported Arini’s July losses.

Arini also holds a small position in Pfleiderer, a struggling wood panelling company backed by Strategic Value Partners. The price of its bonds fell to 17 cents on the euro this month from about 46 cents at the end of August.

Bondholders including Arini are set to take over Pfleiderer as part of a restructuring, making it the latest heavily indebted company the credit fund will have taken control of since last year, along with Ardagh and debt collector Lowell. Italian packaging group Reno de Medici is also set to join that list.

On top of the CDS sales on specific companies, Arini is known for selling large slices of derivative indices that protect against losses at a broad range of riskier companies.

These “equity” tranches mean that Arini in effect provides insurance against the riskiest portion of the European junk debt market, betting defaults will be lower than the market expects.

>>> US After Hours Summary: AVAV +3.5% higher after earnings; COO -15%, NAVN -14

After Hours Summary: AVAV +3.5% higher after earnings; COO -15%, NAVN -14.9%, AEO -9.5% under pressure after earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: AVAV +3.5%,

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: KNTK +5.2% (weighing alternatives, including possible sale, according to Bloomberg), GNLX +4% (publication of a case report from the ongoing Phase 1b dose escalation portion of its Phase 1b/2 OLVI-VEC-202-SCLC trial), AGX +1.5% (increases dividend), AWK +1.4% (gets New Jersey rate approval), ASND +1.2% (presents infant Phase 2 TransCon CNP data in achondroplasia at ESPE), BKD +0.9% (reports August occupancy), TORO +0.5% (proposes spin-off of LPG carrier business), ICFI +0.4% (named OpenAI select partner), LMT +0.3% (awarded $825.9 mln modification to Air Force contract; also awarded $257.3 mln modification to Navy contract)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: COO -15% (also completes strategic review; increase buyback by $1 bln), NAVN -14.9% (also acquires BoomPop), AEO -9.5%, LMNR -5%, WLTH -3.7%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: HGTY -6.6% (launches secondary offering), LEU -3.8% (stock offering), ENB -2.6% (to buy Tallgrass crude transportation business for $2.55 bln cash; launches C$2.6 bln bought-deal common share offering), MPLT -1.6% (stock offering by selling shareholders), PSQL -1.3% (ordinary share offering, relates to warrants; also ordinary share offering by selling securityholders), ADBE -0.5% (OpenAI limits ChatGPT ads for certain competing AI products from Adobe and others, according to The Information), TEM -0.2% (wins up to $9.5 mln ARPA-H award for autonomous heart-failure AI agent), INTU -0.2% (files mixed securities shelf offering), EPRT -0.1% (several executive appointments)

>>> Shana Tova 5787


As is our tradition, we are pleased to share Makor’s Rosh Hashanah Seder text.
Wishing you and your loved ones a sweet, happy, and blessed year, 5787.
Comme le veut la tradition, nous avons le plaisir de vous partager le texte du seder de Roch Hachana de Makor.
Que cette nouvelle année 5787 soit pour vous et vos proches une année douce, heureuse et abondante en bénédictions.
Shana Tova Oumetouka !
{MKOR<GO>}

TechCrunch : Suno replaces its AI models with a new one trained on licensed musi

Suno replaces its AI models with a new one trained on licensed music as copyright suits pile up

AI music model maker Suno on Wednesday unveiled a new model family called Suno v6, which it says was developed using licensed data from music labels and distributors such as Warner Music Group, BMG and Believe.

Suno has faced multiple lawsuits from record labels, which accused the startup of using copyrighted data to train its AI models, which let you generate music with prompts. Suno settled with Warner Music Group last year, and struck a deal with BMG last month.

The company said Suno v6 is not trained using the data it used to train previous versions of its music-generating model.

The startup is releasing three versions of the model: The base Suno v6 model is available to paying users, and is said to be reliable and steerable for controlled outputs; Suno v6 wild is an experimental model, also available to paying users, that’s meant to be used for ideation and getting unexpected results. Lastly, Suno v6 mini is a faster version available to all users. The company plans to retire its older models.

Suno says the new model lineup offers greater flexibility in how you use them. Suno v6 lets you edit a part of a song using a prompt or a word in the lyrics, and even lets you use text, images or video as references to create tracks. You can separate an instrument from a sample and create a new beat with it.

The startup also said it plans to add new features such as letting users remix songs — provided the respective artists opt-in to a new program it is setting up with music labels that lets Suno use their songs for AI-generated features.

Jack Brody, Suno’s chief product officer, said through derivative work, there is more opportunity for revenue generation for all stakeholders

“I think the music ecosystem and our partners are always looking for ways to create more revenue opportunities for their rights holders and artists. So a big part of this release is creating additional revenue streams there,” Brody told TechCrunch in an interview.

Last month, Suno said it plans to add a watermark to songs generated using its platform. It also recently also introduced new download limits based on the account’s tier.

“We can help manage some of the broader ecosystem challenges like streaming fraud and kind of mass exportation and uploading to distributors that are low intent. At the end of the day, we think it is up to the distributors and the platforms to govern what content goes on there,” he said.

Suno is still facing lawsuits from labels like Sony and Universal Music Group, artists like Jason Isbell, and users alleging it ignored security while chasing profits. The model announcement comes a day after the company admitted to training its models using YouTube videos.

Despite these controversies, Suno has raised over $819 million in funding to date, according to PitchBook data.