Audio Collaboration Startup Highnote Scores $2.5 Million Raise With Support from Dropbox Ventures, Plots AI Buildout

New York City-based Highnote disclosed the multimillion-dollar capital influx today, after arriving on the scene back in 2020. With co-founders including Songtrust vet Paulina Vo, Chris Muccioli (previously with Spotify and Splice), and Jordan Bradley (who doubles as CEO), the collaboration platform bills itself specifically as “the best way to discuss and organize notes on any audio file.”

On the features front, Highnote offers lossless streaming, timestamped commenting (including voice comments), group chat, file-version management, secure storage, and more, according to its website. Monthly plans vary in price from free (15 tracks/50GB cloud storage) to $30 for Studio, which supports unlimited tracks and 5TB of cloud storage, the appropriate page shows.

Returning to the funding round, Highnote, as mentioned, has raised $2.5 million from Dropbox Ventures (which is zeroing in on “the next generation of AI-powered apps and tools”) as well as existing backers Afore Capital, Character Capital, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, and Precursor Ventures.

Also participating in this latest round are new angel-investor execs associated with Figma, Atlassian, Abstract, and Dropbox, besides returning angel investors at SoundCloud, Auth0, and Splice.

(On top of that long list of Highnote investors, other music collaboration startups, among them Baton, Submix, and most recently Ampollo, have scored multimillion-dollar raises, complete with a number of backers, of their own.)

Looking to the bigger strategic picture, Highnote intends to capitalize on the funds by exploring “AI-powered features aimed at enhancing the creative process,” with “comment summarization, tone analysis, and creative recommendations” all in the cards, per higher-ups.

And closer to the present, October 15th delivered a fresh Dropbox integration through which users can automatically open any stored audio files directly via Highnote. Meanwhile, November will see the collaboration startup roll out “a full 2-way integration, creating a seamless audio layer on top of any Dropbox account,” the business indicated.

Addressing his company’s $2.5 million raise, co-founder and CEO Jordan Bradley touched on the funding’s ability to accelerate expansion plans at the intersection of AI and collaboration.

“As AI accelerates content creation, content collaboration is at an all-time high,” communicated the former Mighty lead product designer. “We built the industry’s best audio workflow layer so that collaborators can stay organized, efficient, and in control—no matter how fast things are moving.

“This partnership with Dropbox Ventures allows us to deepen our commitment to creators and accelerate our plans to provide a foundational layer for AI powered audio workflows,” concluded Bradley.