Undisclosed · Seed · Media · London, UK
London-based Kahuna has added AI Startup Factory, also known as Yapay Zekâ Fabrikası, to its ongoing seed round with an undisclosed investment. The music-fintech platform said the investment will support growth in the UK and US and further development of its global technology infrastructure.
Kahuna combines royalty-backed artist advances with music distribution, royalty collection and growth tools. According to the company and its new investor, its underwriting system analyses streaming, royalty, social and performance data to forecast future income. Eligible artists can receive an offer within 24 hours and retain ownership of their music while Kahuna recoups the advance from future royalties.
Underwriting royalties through distribution
The commercial mechanism depends on joining financing to the infrastructure that collects the cash flows used for repayment. Kahuna says it draws data from more than 50 digital platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and TikTok. Because distribution and royalty collection sit inside the same platform, the company can compare forecast income with realised receipts and feed those results back into later underwriting decisions.
That model addresses a practical gap for independent artists: catalogue income can be measurable but arrives over time, while recording, release and marketing costs come earlier. An advance turns expected royalties into current working capital without requiring an artist to sell the underlying music rights. Kahuna still carries forecasting and concentration risk, however, because weak releases or changes in platform economics can reduce the cash available for recoupment.
Expanding an existing artist-finance platform
AI Startup Factory said Kahuna served more than 4,000 artists and 19,000 songs by August 2026. Those figures are company-reported measures of platform activity rather than revenue, but they give the underwriting model a broader operating dataset than a small pilot would provide.
The investment extends an existing financing programme rather than establishing the company from scratch. Digital Music News reported that Kahuna announced a $1m seed raise backed by Revo Capital in September 2025, when the company said artist advances typically ranged from $5,000 to $20,000. Adding a specialist AI investor now brings another backer to the ongoing seed as Kahuna tries to scale both capital deployment and the software used to assess it.
Sources checked:
e-Girişim · AI Startup Factory announcement · Webrazzi · Kahuna funding page · Digital Music News · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
