Recently on the Coral Capital Podcast, we sat down with Mikey Shulman, co-founder of Suno, shortly after the company raised a $250M Series C to expand access to music creation worldwide.
When Music Becomes the Obvious Choice
Music plays a uniquely emotional and cultural role in people’s lives, and that depth is easy to underestimate. Built with co-founders from Kensho Technologies, Mikey shared that Suno wasn’t the obvious company to start, as the team initially believed making good music would require far more compute than was realistic. Once the research breakthroughs arrived, making music became irresistible.
That instinct traces back to Mikey’s childhood. He’s been playing music since he was four and described making music with friends as one of the most meaningful forms of creative expression he knows. Listening to him, it was clear why he left finance to build a feeling worth scaling.
Choosing Not to Be in San Francisco
Suno has faced pushback for not being based in San Francisco, particularly as a consumer AI company, but Mikey’s philosophy, shaped by his earlier venture, puts talent density ahead of geography. Today, Suno operates across Cambridge, New York, and Los Angeles, without anchoring itself to a San Francisco office.
What stayed with me was his view of distance as an advantage. Stepping outside San Francisco’s constant urgency gives the team room to focus on a longer term vision rather than chasing the moment. He described a group so deeply invested in music that motivation is intrinsic, a dynamic healthier than operating inside a perpetual “pressure cooker.”
Using Tech to Bring Music Closer
While much of the conversation around AI focuses on digital novelty, Mikey kept returning to real world experiences. He imagined concerts where artists perform fan made versions of their own songs, collapsing the distance between creator and audience. As he put it, that kind of engagement is “what music is meant to be.”
That same lens shapes his view on AI generated artists. The rise of artists like Xania Monet suggests that emotional resonance still matters most. The work connects because there’s a poet behind the lyrics, with AI simply helping bring that voice to more people.
A Partnership Shaping Music’s Future
“I would hate for there to be an AI music world and a non-AI music world.” That idea sits at the center of how Mikey thinks about Suno’s partnership with Warner Music Group. He’s intentional about calling it a partnership rather than a deal, one with real scope to explore new forms of fandom and interactivity alongside artists.
Mikey also pointed out how fragmented music already is, discovered on one platform and consumed on another. Creating a separate AI category would only add more friction. In his view, AI is following a familiar path, much like autotune, becoming less of a category and more of a tool quietly woven into how music gets made and shared.
If you’re curious about Suno’s creative approach to building music models and why the product has resonated so strongly in Japan, tune in to our full conversation on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
