Cloudflare is acquiring artificial intelligence data marketplace Human Native, the company said Thursday, as it expands its push to develop transactions between AI developers and content creators. “Content creators deserve full control over their work, whether they want to write for humans or optimize for AI,” Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said in a release announcing the news.
Source: Cloudflare acquires AI data marketplace Human Native
As part of its 25th birthday celebration, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a series of new partnerships with AI tech companies that are now customers of its commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. Developed by the foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise allows large-scale reuse and distribution of Wikipedia content, as well as content from other Wikimedia projects.
There are many more buyers in the marketplace today and they bring a wide range of approaches. Some are highly disciplined, while others are focused on acquiring deals to build portfolios of assets that are not correlated to the financial markets. Some buyers concentrate on legacy-only catalogs, others target newer songwriter catalogs with go-forward songwriting arrangements attached.
The industry-first, seminanual benchmark polls artist managers, lawyers and indie executives for their expectations for catalog investment trends. The Index is intentionally centered on the perceptions of music industry stakeholders, rather than buyout funds and financial institutions that can be a few steps removed from the “action” in the space.
Source: Introducing: Duetti and Billboard’s Music Finance Index
Heavybit, the self-described “leading early-stage investor in enterprise infrastructure,” led the newer raise. Also contributing to the $4.5 million tranche were the Business Development Bank of Canada and Halifax-based Build Ventures. Looking ahead to the remainder of 2026, Musical AI intends to keep on building out its core attribution tech. Per the company, the involved tools are “successfully deployed” and “can parse what percentage of a generated output came from which source.”
Source: Attribution and Licensing Startup Musical AI Scores $4.5M Raise
The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday released its December Consumer Price Index, showing modest inflation of 0.3 percent on a monthly basis and 2.7 percent for the year. But a deeper dive into the data tables also shows an outlier that is relevant to Hollywood: Subscription video services. According to the BLS data, “Subscription and rental of video and video games” saw inflation of 19.5 percent in December.
Source: “Streamflation” Is Real: U.S. Inflation Data Shows Soaring Price of Streaming Video Services
The national executive director and chief negotiator of the actors union SAG-AFTRA enumerated on his dollars-and-cents approach to what the labor group calls “synthetic performers” in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show on Thursday. His remarks previewed the tack that the union may take when its negotiations with studios and streamers begin on Feb. 9, where AI is again expected to be a top issue.
Source: SAG-AFTRA’s Likely Strategy: Make AI Performers as Expensive as Humans
Anthropic is gearing up to raise a fresh $10 billion at a $350 billion valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal. TechCrunch has confirmed the raise and valuation, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Claude maker last raised a $13 billion Series F round at a $183 billion valuation three months ago, so this raise nearly doubles the AI firm’s value. In March, Anthropic secured $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation.
Source: Anthropic reportedly raising $10B at $350B valuation | TechCrunch
The world’s largest music rights company announced Tuesday (January 6) a strategic collaboration with AI computing giant NVIDIA, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, currently valued at approximately $4.56 trillion. According to a press release, the partnership will see NVIDIA and UMG “undertake collaborative research and development to promote shared objectives of advancing human music creation and rightsholder compensation.”
Back in November, Napster’s $3 billion funding apparently fell through, leaving the music streaming platform’s future uncertain. Now, the company has abruptly shuttered its music streaming capabilities—while users were actively using the service—in its broader pivot to AI assistants. The pivot into AI isn’t unexpected—the brand was purchased by AI company Infinite Reality last year—but for users of the music streaming service, to call it jarring is an understatement.
Source: Napster Music Streaming Service Abruptly Shuts Down, Pivots to AI