Audio Chateau Records Secures Up to $9 Million, Adds Poo Bear as Adviser

Audio Chateau Records, the label launched by Jared Gutstadt, has secured up to US$9 million in Series A financing, according to Music Business Worldwide, which reported the deal on Thursday, 29 October 2026. A Series A is a company's first large round of outside investment, and "up to" means the figure is a ceiling rather than a guaranteed sum.

The round includes investment from Jonathan Schulman, Ben Lurie and Julie Gauthier of CW Ventures. Schulman has sat on the label's board since 2024, when it announced a $4.5 million raise in August of that year.

The same announcement brings in Jason "Poo Bear" Boyd as a strategic advisor, an outside role that offers guidance rather than a day-to-day job. Boyd is a Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer best known for his work with Justin Bieber. He also wrote three singles that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the chart that ranks songs each week using sales, radio airplay and streaming: "What Do You Mean?", the remix of "Despacito" and "I'm the One."

Boyd and Gutstadt have worked together before. They collaborated on the podcast series Bear and a Banjo, a link that predates the label's current funding.

Gutstadt co-founded the music company Jingle Punks in 2008. Audio Chateau Records began in January 2024 as a label under Audio Up Media, his podcast company. Its music reaches shops and streaming services through Virgin Music Group, the distribution division of Universal Music Group. Distribution is the business that delivers a label's records to those services, and it often handles the logistics for smaller companies in exchange for a share of the income.

For a young label, a Series A round can mean more room to sign artists, hire staff and make records before the first releases bring in money. Each of those costs is paid by someone: a session musician, an engineer, a warehouse worker.

A label that began as a branch of a podcast company now has a funding round of up to $9 million, a board member who has been part of the company since 2024, and a songwriter with three No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 in an advisory role. Further details on the label's plans would come from the company itself.