GRAI, a Khosla Ventures-backed AI music firm, acquires social music platform Hangout

Khosla Ventures-backed AI music company GRAI acquires social music platform Hangout

September 22, 2026 By Murray Stassen

AI music company GRAI has acquired Hangout , the social music platform built by Turntable Labs , founded by Joseph Perla .

Continue to article...

In August, GRAI, headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, became one of the first two companies to license the AI music patents of Music IP Holdings , the entity backed by Universal Music Group .

MIH unveiled a portfolio of over 24 AI music patents on August 20, with Udio named as the other launch licensee.

Announcing that license, GRAI CEO and co-founder Ilya Liasun said the company was building a service “where music moves between people.”

Hangout launched in November 2024 with a catalog of over 100 million tracks, licensed from Sony Music Entertainment , Universal Music Group , Warner Music Group , and Merlin .

Founded in 2025 , GRAI has raised seed funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and Inovo VC . TechCrunch reported in April that the round totaled USD $9 million .

The deal announced today (September 22) was structured as a merger, a GRAI spokesperson told MBW , with GRAI Inc. acquiring the whole of Hangout ‘s parent company rather than its assets.

TTFM Labs, Incorporated , which trades as Turntable Labs , is the surviving entity and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of GRAI .

GRAI was set up by the team behind Vochi , the AI video-editing app acquired by Pinterest , and is building what it calls a social streaming service for a younger generation.

The company says it will maintain and grow Hangout ‘s deals with labels, publishers, and collecting societies.

GRAI says the new product combines Hangout ‘s “deep insights into social listening behavior” with its own “tech and consumer product vision.”

Users of Hangout build virtual rooms, known as ‘Hangouts,’ where they take turns as DJ for friends and strangers.

Perla modeled the platform on Turntable.fm , the social music service he helped launch in 2011 .

Turntable.fm closed in December 2013 . Perla revived the concept in 2021 with Turntable , and again in 2024 with Hangout .

> “Joseph and his team built a product that showed how deeply people want to gather around music and do more with it than press play.” Andrei Avsievich, GRAI

“I grew up backstage at an opera house where my grandfather sang, so music has always meant people to me,” said Andrei Avsievich , co-founder and President of GRAI . “Joseph and his team built a product that showed how deeply people want to gather around music and do more with it than press play.

“We see it exactly the same way. The future of streaming is social and co-creative. It just needed two things: the demand and the technology.

“With today’s AI, it now has both.”

“I built Hangout to fix what’s broken in online spaces. We wanted to recreate that feeling of sitting on a bedroom floor passing around records, turning music back into a collective experience,” said Joseph Perla , founder of Hangout .

“Integrating our work into GRAI is how we keep that core belief in human connection moving forward.”

Perla joins GRAI as a board observer, the spokesperson told MBW .

> “I built Hangout to fix what’s broken in online spaces. We wanted to recreate that feeling of sitting on a bedroom floor passing around records, turning music back into a collective experience.” Joseph Perla , Hangout

Turntable Labs raised $8.2 million in seed funding in August 2024, in a round led by Founders Fund , Elizabeth Street Ventures , 468 Capital , and f7 Ventures .

It also runs a second product, Turntable , which its website ties to listening parties, artist shows, and a Turntable Token .

In December 2025, Hangout added a generative AI feature called Turntable.AI , which lets users create a track from a text prompt.

Perla told Billboard at the time that the platform had more than two million users. “We’re nearing the ChatGPT moment for music,” he said.

GRAI says it is building its service “with the music industry rather than around it, so that every play and every change pays the artists and songwriters behind the song.”

GRAI says its own service is launching soon, with a waitlist open at grai.fm . Music Business Worldwide

_Originally reported by [Music Business Worldwide](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/khosla-ventures-backed-ai-music-company-grai-acquires-social-music-platform-hangout/)._