Sonilo Raises $11M to Build the AI-Native Audio Stack for Video

Founded by veterans of TikTok's AI and music teams, Sonilo is developing proprietaryAI-native music and sound models that adapt to the pacing, emotion and story of each video

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonilo, a generative audio company building proprietary video-native music and sound models, today announced an $11 million funding round led by B Capital, with participation from Redpoint. The funding will be used for compute infrastructure to scale model performance, go-to-market expansion across creator and developer platforms, and grow its music licensing.

At the core of Sonilo's platform is its Sound World Model, a proprietary multimodal AI system that connects video understanding, audio generation, and temporal alignment. Rather than treating music and sound effects as isolated assets, the model reads the timing, movement, and emotional arc of a scene to generate audio that belongs to that specific story. Creators can generate a synchronized, commercially-ready soundtrack by dropping in a video, describing what they want in text, or combining both. Sonilo's model development is built around the creator's actual workflow rather than industry benchmarks, a philosophy the team developed over years of building recommendation and generation systems at platform scale.

"Almost every audio-generation experience starts with a text prompt. You have to describe the music you want, line it up to the exact moments in your videos, and find the perfect sound effects which can take hours for one piece of content," said Shawn Song, CEO and Co-Founder of Sonilo. "We built Sonilo to understand the visual story. You give us the footage, and Sonilo understands what's happening frame by frame, including the pacing, emotion, and story, and generates music and sound effects that naturally fit the scene. We believe the future of video isn't just about generating better pictures but making those worlds feel real through audio that fits perfectly."

Building a video-native sound workflow requires more than audio generation. It takes multimodal AI research, music licensing expertise, and products designed around how creators work. Sonilo's founding team brings these capabilities together. CEO Shawn Song, a CMU-trained researcher and former multimodal AI tech lead at TikTok, and CTO Alex Yin, who holds a PhD in Computer Music from the University of York and worked alongside Song at TikTok, bring expertise in multimodal understanding and audio generation. COO Keli Li, who built and led global music at TikTok, brings deep experience in music licensing and industry partnerships. CMO Trista Taylor has helped incubate consumer AI apps featured in a16z's Top 50 rankings and leads Sonilo's product and go-to-market strategy.

"We believe generative audio will become an essential part of the AI-native video stack. Sonilo stands out because its multimodal technology gives creators two ways to generate music and sound effects: describe what they want in text, or provide a video and let the model create audio that fits the scene," commented Daisy Cai, General Partner at B Capital. "That model-native approach, combined with Shawn's deep expertise in multimodal music generation and the team's focus on the creator workflow, gives Sonilo the opportunity to define a new category in generative media. We're excited to support the team as they build the audio layer for the next generation of video."

Sonilo's platform generates music and sound effects directly from footage or text for short-form and short-drama creators, developer platforms building AI video workflows, and enterprise production teams. The platform also offers AI dubbing with synchronized lip-syncing, enabling short-drama and content studios to localize video across languages without manual post-production. Early distribution partners include TapNow, an AI creator aggregator, and ComfyUI.

The company is also building its commercial music infrastructure around licensed source material, with Shutterstock as an early licensing partner. Sonilo's models are trained on licensed music datasets, with licensing fees and revenue share flowing to rights holders and artists. Sonilo is finalizing master recording and publishing deals with major rights organizations, with agreements expected to close in the coming weeks. Sonilo plans to launch a consumer app in Q4, bringing its video-to-music generation technology directly to individual creators.

About Sonilo

Sonilo builds video-native generative audio models for creators, developers, and media platforms. Its technology generates music and sound effects directly from footage or text, creating soundtracks built for each video's story rather than pulled from a library. Sonilo is building a future where every video can have its own soundtrack, because when music truly fits a story, people don't just watch. They feel. Sonilo is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by B Capital. Learn more at sonilo.com.

About B Capital

B Capital invests globally in extraordinary founders and businesses shaping the future through technology. With more than $9 billion in assets under management and dedicated stage-based funds, the firm focuses on seed to early- and late-stage venture growth investments, primarily in the technology, healthcare and resilience tech sectors. Founded in 2015, B Capital has an integrated, global team across nine locations in the U.S. and Asia. The firm's value-add platform, together with the consulting expertise of its strategic partner, The Boston Consulting Group, provides entrepreneurs with the tools and resources to scale quickly and efficiently, expand into new markets and build market-leading businesses.

SOURCE Sonilo