TikTok reportedly acquires AI music startup Jukedeck
- Tuesday, July 23rd, 2019
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Jukedeck, a UK startup which used artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically generate original music, has reportedly been acquired by the parent company of hugely popular short-form video app TikTok.
The startup’s founder and CEO Ed Newton-Rex and a number of his colleagues have recently updated their LinkedIn profiles to show that Bytedance is now their place of employment. And, according to Music Ally, that’s because Jukedeck was acquired by Bytedance earlier this year.
Newton-Rex’s new role positions him as director of Bytedance’s AI Lab. Meanwhile, David Trevelyan and Pierre Chanquion (previously senior software engineers, music production R&D at Jukedeck) are now senior software engineers for the AI Lab; Katerina Kosta and Gabriele Medeot (formerly machine learning researches at Jukedeck) have become senior machine learning researches at Bytedance; and Marco Selvi (Jukedeck’s senior software engineer and machine learning researcher) is now senior machine learning researcher at Bytedance.
Jukedeck’s website is now offline, but its homepage reads “We can’t tell you more just yet, but we’re looking forward to continuing to fuel creativity using musical AI”, suggesting that Jukedeck’s technology and staff will continue to work in the same way under the Bytedance banner.