AI music firm GRAI acquires social listening platform Hangout
AI music company GRAI has acquired social music platform Hangout in a deal announced on 22 September.
The transaction was structured as a merger. GRAI Inc. bought the whole of Hangout’s parent company rather than picking up selected assets. That parent, TTFM Labs, Incorporated, trades as Turntable Labs and now survives as a wholly owned subsidiary of GRAI, according to Music Business Worldwide.
Hangout is built around shared listening. Users build virtual rooms known as Hangouts where they take turns as DJ. The service pairs group chats with music streaming, and lets people customise spaces to chat, stream and play together.
It launched in November 2024 with a catalogue of more than 100 million tracks. That catalogue was licensed from Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Merlin, the organisation that represents independent labels in digital deals.
Hangout was built by Turntable Labs, founded by Joseph Perla. Perla helped launch Turntable.fm in 2011. That early social-listening service closed in December 2013. Perla revived the concept in 2021 with Turntable and again in 2024 with Hangout.
The buyer is young. GRAI is headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, and was founded in 2025 by the team behind Vochi, the AI video-editing app acquired by Pinterest. Its chief executive and co-founder is Ilya Liasun, with co-founder Andrei Avsievich as president.
GRAI raised USD $9 million in seed funding, the early investment used to build a young company, in a round co-led by Khosla Ventures and Inovo VC. TechCrunch reported the total in April. In August, GRAI became one of the first two companies to license the AI music patents of Music IP Holdings, a body backed by Universal Music Group.
Music IP Holdings unveiled a portfolio of more than 24 AI music patents on 20 August. The other launch licensee named was Udio.
GRAI said it will maintain and grow Hangout’s deals with labels, publishers and collecting societies, the bodies that collect royalties for songwriters and rights holders. No financial terms for the acquisition were disclosed.
What makes this stand out is the pairing. One side brings licensed social listening with human curation. The other brings AI music tools built under licensed patents. For fans, this means the rooms stay open while the ownership changes.
