CULTURE

UMG forges AI partnerships

The music industry might be warming up to AI. 

On Thursday, Universal Music Group, one of the biggest record labels in the industry, announced a partnership with Stability AI to develop AI-powered music creation tools for musicians and producers, powered by “responsibly trained generative AI.” 

Through the partnership, the AI startup will work with UMG’s artists to understand “how artists adopt and engage with these technologies,” the companies said in their announcement. 

“With AI, as with everything else we do, we start with what best supports our work to help them achieve creative and commercial success and build from that foundation to forge new and better commercial and creative opportunities,” Michael Nash, UMG’s chief digital officer and executive vice president, said in the announcement. 

The partnership follows UMG settling its lawsuit against AI music platform Udio, after the label initially claimed it trained its models on copyrighted music without permission. The companies instead opted to forge a partnership that includes licensing agreements for recorded music under its roster and the development of a new generative AI platform “trained on authorized and licensed music.” 

The record label’s excitement about generative AI isn’t the only sign that the industry is looking at the tech for new opportunities. Earlier this week, BMI, ASCAP and SOCAN, the three leading performance rights organizations in North America, announced that they would begin accepting registrations for partially AI-generated music, defining this as a musical work that “combines elements of AI-generated musical content with elements of human authorship.” 

“We believe AI can be a powerful tool for our members, as long as the law puts humans first and technology companies play fair and respect the rights of creators,” Elizabeth Matthews, CEO, ASCAP, said in a statement announcing the policy. 

These decisions mark a stark 180 from the rest of Hollywood's rallying cry against generative AI as video generation tools like Sora and Google Veo permeate the public eye. The music industry, too, has some holdouts, with Spotify announcing a crackdown on spammy, AI-generated tracks in late September. While the companies intend to build AI “responsibly,” developing these models above board as far as licensing goes, copyright isn’t the only issue at play. As tools like these continue to crop up and tech firms seek to integrate AI into the creation of art, the question of whether the artists themselves will grasp onto it still remains murky.

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PRODUCTS

Google, Reliance offer free AI trials

Google is ramping up its India push. 

On Thursday, the company announced a partnership with tech conglomerate Reliance Industries to bundle its AI services with eligible Jio users, Reliance’s telecom subsidiary that provides 5G services. 

Certain Jio users will now have access to Google’s AI Pro subscription for 18 months for free through the partnership, starting with users between 18 and 25. The partnership marks yet another move by tech giants targeting the Indian market to increase adoption of their AI services:

• This week, OpenAI announced that it would offer ChatGPT Go subscriptions for free to all users in India. This follows the August launch of a “Learning Accelerator” in the country, aiming to deploy AI to teachers and students. 

• Perplexity announced a partnership with Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator and Jio’s primary competitor, giving customers free subscription trials. 

And the interest extends beyond simply offering free services: Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced a $15 billion investment in AI infrastructure in India. Anthropic, meanwhile, is planning to expand global operations in India by opening a Bengaluru office in early 2026, and Microsoft invested $3 billion in Indian cloud and AI infrastructure in January. 

These tech firms’ attention to courting users in India is growing. As it stands, the country lacks a strong homegrown AI presence, but public perception of the tech remains generally positive. According to Stanford University’s 2025 AI Index report, 62% of Indian respondents believe that AI has more benefits than drawbacks, compared to 39% in the U.S. 

And as tech firms seek returns on their massive AI investments, targeting more AI-friendly regions might be key.

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MARKETS

Nvidia eyes AI coding startup investment

Nvidia might have its sights set on AI coding. 

The company reportedly plans to invest anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion in AI coding firm Poolside, people familiar with the deal told Bloomberg. The startup is in talks to raise $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation, and has already secured more than $1 billion in commitments. 

Poolside closed a $500 million Series B round earlier this month in which Nvidia was an investor, hiking its valuation up to $3 billion. The company’s skyrocketing valuation is the latest of a funding blitz for AI coding startups: 

• Cognition raised a $500 million Series C round in August, hitting a valuation of $9.8 billion. The raise followed the company’s acquisition of AI coding tool Windsurf in July. 

• Lovable raised $200 million in a Series A round at a valuation of $1.8 billion in July, eight months after launching, and claimed at that point that it had more than 2.3 million active users. 

• Anysphere, which runs code editor Cursor, raised $900 million at a valuation of $9 billion in May.

These investments could signal that stakeholders see major potential in AI coding as a means of getting returns. 

It also highlights that Nvidia is sparing no expense for AI startups: The company has invested in nearly 60 startups this year alone. Startup investments – especially in hot areas like AI coding – could help the chip giant secure its influence and dominance in the market.

LINKS

• Meta to raise money through bond offerings worth up to $30 billion amid AI cost growth

• Core Scientific shareholders vote to reject CoreWeave takeover bid 

• Legal AI startup Legora raises $150 million at $1.8 billion valuation

• Figma acquires generative AI firm Weavy for undisclosed sum

• The Prompting Company raises $6.5 million to help products get mentioned in AI apps

• Health AI startup Bevel raises $10 million series A

• Canva Design Model: An AI model trained to understand “the full complexity of design.” 

• Company Knowledge in Slack: An OpenAI-backed API built into Slack to give users more relevant, tailored answers. 

• Dr Fonts: An AI-powered font generator for searching, finding and building any font. 

• OpenAI Aardvark: An agentic security researcher powered by GPT-5, available in private beta.  

• Cognition SWE-1.5: The startup’s latest in its family of models, optimized for software engineering, now available on Windsurf. 

• Perplexity Patents: An AI-powered patent research agent that makes IP intelligence “accessible to everyone.”

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GAMES

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How concerned are you about security risks in AI-powered browsers?

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• I trust AI companies will fix these issues (12%)