Kahuna funding

Distribution and advance platform Kahuna has announced a $1 million seed raise. Photo Credit: Gabriel Gurrola

AI-powered distribution, promotion, and funding platform Kahuna has scored $1 million in seed capital and set its sights on continued expansion initiatives.

Headquartered in London but possessing a significant presence in Turkey, Kahuna described the round and its wider buildout ambitions to DMN. Heretofore bootstrapped, the company says it “identifies, funds, and scales rising independent artists.”

At the top level, that includes commission-based distribution with no upfront fees, according to the entity. On the discovery and financing sides, Kahuna is said to harness AI both to identify high-potential talent and to project streaming earnings when paying advances.

Typically totaling between $5,000 and $20,000 a pop, these advances are recoupable solely via DSP royalties, the business told DMN. “We recoup a share of your income until it’s paid back – no interest, no ownership taken,” the appropriate website reads.

Meanwhile, the same site also touts a number of capabilities extending but not confined to playlists, sync, and adjacent efforts to improve monetization.

Back to the $1 million seed raise, Revo Capital supported Kahuna as part of its (Revo’s) ongoing $100 million third fund. Bearing in mind the distributor’s aforementioned presence in Turkey, Revo bills itself as the nation’s leading VC.

Kahuna told DMN that it will use the newly obtained tranche to bankroll additional advances as well as continued product and data-science development. Regarding its current userbase, the company indicated that it’d already onboarded north of 250 artists, among them Evdeki Saat and Lara Çayan.

It probably doesn’t need saying, but there’s certainly a financial upside associated with discovering promising musicians, spearheading effective marketing initiatives, and obtaining interests in growth-positioned catalogs along the way.

As such, it was only last month that artist-advance provider beatBread announced $124 million in fresh funding. And March saw Duetti – which, it should be emphasized, deals in straight catalog investments as opposed to advances – secure $200 million of its own.

All told, even without accounting for the ABS madness, Kahuna’s $1 million seed round has pushed 2025’s YTD core music industry funding further past $3.9 billion. Especially given the prevalence of gargantuan raises – see the $1.2 billion Warner Music and Bain Capital JV – evidence strongly suggests that the sum will crack $4 billion sooner rather than later.