I'm Catherine Stewart, CEO of DataMind Audio, an audio software company that’s already built an ecosystem of ethical AI music tools to empower artists. Now we’re scaling to a collective creative music platform. Our mission: unlock AI superpowers for music makers while giving them full control over their creative DNA.
Here's the problem. 79% of musicians don't trust AI, and among those who've tried it, use is falling . It learns from their work without asking, and hands back generic slop. But let’s not write off an entirely new category of music creation because the first big tech movers are thieves! Artists want in to the power of AI on their own terms. There’s a £2.4 billion opportunity for a company that does it ethically and well.
Artists can now train their own models — an intimate, accurate sonic twin of themselves - their own ‘Artist Brain’ on one laptop, in one afternoon, no data centre in the loop, no permissions from big tech needed. Your sound travels with you, always under your control. We're already building Kollektiv, a creative platform powered by DataMind Audio, where artists train their own models, and create and co-create with them using our playable instruments.
DataMind was co-founded in a DEFCON greenroom in 2022 by a friend-group of senior leaders from Ableton, Berklee, IRCAM, Edinburgh, Disney and the Dadabots at Stability: Musicians, researchers, coders and industry operators who saw both the unparalleled promise of generative AI and its dangers for musicians.
Here's the foundation we're building from. Working with artists, we've built a snap-in ecosystem of five rights-safe instruments that transform creator workflow. £350,000 in revenue £250K in non-dilutive grants. Loads of awards, including from ISMIR, Sound on Sound, UN AI Sumit for good, and Innovate Uk. We’re trusted by Hans Zimmer's studio and Epic Games. Our distribution partnerships reach 50 million-plus. We’ve just completed a POC with one of the world's largest telcos to deliver our product off their edge, solving huge latency issues.
I'm a pragmatic operator with the soul of an artist, and I've run this playbook to a successful exit before. Artist endorsement, industry validation, distribution through giants.
On a proven infrastructure:we're raising £1.9 million via an ASA to scale. If you care about the soul of music, come set the ethical standard for an entirely new category of music creation. Come find us for a live demo of our ecosystem that will blow your mind!

Natasha Lytton

Sessions

Venture Spotlight - Semi Final 1

Venture Spotlight - Semi Final 2