GRAI, a Warsaw-based AI music company founded last year by the team behind the Vochi video app, has acquired Hangout, the social listening platform where users take turns as DJ in virtual rooms. The deal announced on 22 September was structured as a merger: GRAI took over Hangout's parent, Turntable Labs, which survives as a wholly owned subsidiary. Founder Joseph Perla joins GRAI's board as an observer.
Hangout matters for its licences. It launched in late 2024 with more than 100 million tracks cleared by Sony, Universal, Warner and Merlin, and last December it added a text-to-track generator. Perla has revived the same idea three times since Turntable.fm in 2011, and told Billboard last year the platform had passed two million users. GRAI says it will keep and grow those label, publisher and society deals.
GRAI's own credentials are recent but pointed. In August it became one of the first two licensees, with Udio, of the AI music patents held by Music IP Holdings, the Universal-backed entity. Its seed round, co-led by Khosla Ventures and Inovo, was reported at nine million dollars. The company says it is building a social streaming service for a younger audience, with a waitlist open, in which every play and every edit pays the artist and songwriter.
Both sides pitched the combination as demand meeting technology: people want to gather around music and do more than press play, and AI now makes co-creation practical. What the product actually looks like remains unannounced.
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