GRAI Secures License to Music IP Holdings Patents for AI Music

In the AI era, anyone can create remixes, covers, and their own versions of favorite songs. For the music industry, though, this raises a problem: how do you authorize this kind of use, track new versions, and pay rights holders? GRAI has become one of the first companies to license the Music IP Holdings (MIH) patent portfolio, which offers infrastructure for solving this problem.

Music IP Holdings was created through a strategic partnership between Universal Music Group (UMG) and Liquidax Capital. The MIH portfolio includes 24 issued or allowed patents and more than 50 pending applications. They cover a broad range of work with AI-generated content: user prompts, moderation, watermarking, identification tags, authorization, licensed distribution, and payouts. The patents extend beyond music to video, images, text, and the use of a person's name and likeness.

As Andrey Avsievich, GRAI's cofounder, explains, MIH's approach rests on three key principles: “artists decide what gets created before the process even begins; every approved version is tracked; every use is paid for.”

Udio has also licensed MIH's patents, alongside GRAI. The startups will be able to use the technology for licensed covers, remixes, and other interactive music formats.

GRAI was founded in 2025 by the team behind Vochi, a startup acquired by Pinterest. GRAI is building a social music streaming platform and its own AI model trained on licensed data. GRAI's idea is to let users interact with music and modify it while preserving rights holders' control and payouts to songwriters and performers. The startup previously raised $9 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Inovo VC, Tensor Ventures, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company, Flyer One Ventures, and others.