AI Sound Generator Startup Mirelo Raises $41M Seed Round Led By Index And A16z

The round was led by Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Berlin-based Atlantic and California-based TriplePoint Capital.

Mirelo has raised around $44 million to date and attracted angel backing from tech leaders including Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch and Revolut executive Antoine Le Nel.

Founded by former musicians CJ Simon-Gabriel and Florian Wenzel, who met as AI researchers at Amazon, the Berlin-based startup currently has a team of 10.

Mirelo's key focus is that while AI has revolutionized text, image, and video creation, sound has been left behind. It highlights the time-consuming task of adding music and audio to visuals, with creators and sound designers spending hours scouring stock libraries and manually syncing effects.

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Founded in 2023, Mirelo has developed proprietary AI models for sound in video. The company claims that users can upload any video, and in just seconds, Mirelo generates matching audio for everything happening on screen. Its sound generation technology is particularly suited for AI-generated videos and the gaming industry.

Mirelo creates its AI models from scratch, training them on data for which it has secured licensing agreements. Its primary customers include individual creators and small studios, while its API is used by companies integrating its models into their platforms and tools.

Recently, Mirelo launched a new video-to-sound model, Mirelo SFX v1.5, which it says can generate multiple soundtrack versions faster than real-time.

The startup also claims its models require 50 times less compute power than typical large language models (LLMs). With the funds raised, Mirelo aims to enhance its technology and expand its customer base.

Simon-Gabriel, Mirelo CEO, said: “Think of the difference between talkies and silent films – video without sound has so much less feeling and atmosphere.

“Mirelo’s first step is about democratising access, empowering everyone to create the sound that their (AI) videos deserve.

"But we’ll also empower professionals to rework audio, to do more of what they love, to be more expressive and imaginative in what they can achieve, while handling the boring stuff such as synchronisation. Our bigger mission is to become the audio layer for all visual content across videos, gaming, social media, films and beyond.”

Wenzel said: “There’s a deep affinity between music and engineering; maybe that’s why so many of Mirelo’s team are musicians, and why musicians have always been early adopters of new technology.

“There’s something about the intersection of mathematical precision and expressiveness that seems to draw people to both fields.”

Guido Appenzeller, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said: "To date, a16z has invested in multiple world-leading generative models each with a different focus area. Mirelo is tackling one of the most technically challenging and least explored areas of generative media: a specialised model for sound effect creation.

“CJ and Florian have assembled a research-driven team whose breakthroughs in tokenisation, data curation, and conditioning rival far larger efforts and we’re excited to back Mirelo as they scale their technology for the next generation of video models.”

Mirelo AI

Mirelo AI builds foundational sound and music models that power next-generation audio applications. The company focuses on developing advanced music and audio AI systems, enabling creative, scalable, and intelligent solutions for composition, sound design, and audio understanding across industries.