Media startup CHAOS raises £1m led by Bridford Group with Amuse
This article covers CHAOS, a media startup that has raised £1m in a pre-seed funding round led by Bridford Group, with participation from Amuse and industry operators, and is planning a public launch on 29 October 2026. The funding will support product development, provenance infrastructure and expansion in the UK and US, targeting artists, producers and rights holders who need clearer attribution and streamlined collaboration.
CHAOS, a media startup that aims to bring music collaboration into a single workspace, has raised £1m in a pre-seed funding round led by Bridford Group, with participation from Amuse and a group of industry operators. The cash will fund product development, infrastructure work around contribution provenance and an expansion push in the United Kingdom and the United States ahead of a planned public launch on 29 October 2026.
Why it matters
Music production is a fragmented process: files, chats, stems and feedback often live in different places, which complicates collaboration and makes attribution unclear. CHAOS is attempting to address that gap by offering a single environment designed to track and attribute every contribution. That proposition matters to artists, producers and rights holders who increasingly look for transparent provenance as digital distribution and catalogue management grow more automated.
The £1m round gives CHAOS runway to deepen that provenance layer, add advanced collaboration tools and accelerate the platform’s rollout in two major markets where much of the industry’s commercial activity occurs.
Inside the product
CHAOS combines communication, file storage, feedback, sharing and lossless live writing rooms so collaborators can work in one place rather than across multiple tools. Central to the product is a provenance layer that fingerprints contributions and creates a record of the creative process, intended to give creators visibility and attribution for every contribution.
The company says development priorities include “advancing intelligence into this infrastructure” to organise projects, surface relevant information and automate repetitive tasks while keeping creative decisions with humans. The platform is positioned to take a track from first idea to finished record without requiring users to juggle separate chats, cloud folders and versioned files.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Bridford Group, which invests its own capital into founder-led businesses across sectors including music and technology. Lead participation also came from Amuse, a data-driven digital distribution service for independent musicians. The announcement lists additional participation from “a group of investors and high profile operators across the global music industry,” signalling backing from people with operational music experience rather than purely financial investors.
Bridford Group positions itself as a long-term backer of founders building category-defining products. Amuse brings distribution and catalogue expertise that CHAOS says will be useful as the platform’s provenance features become relevant to publishing and release workflows.
In the announcement, Bridford Group, Investor at Bridford Group, said:
Ruhan is the kind of founder we look to back at Bridford. He has lived the problem he’s solving, and in just 18 months he has taken CHAOS from a solo project to a team across London and New York with more than 15,000 creators waiting to get on the platform. He understands how artists and producers actually work, and he has a very clear vision. We are excited to be involved with CHAOS and back Ruhan as he builds the home for creative collaboration.
In the announcement, Giorgio D’Ambrosio, CEO at Amuse, said:
Amuse exists to help the next generation of artists and labels release music and build careers, effortlessly and on their own terms. CHAOS shares that belief and adds something the industry increasingly needs: provenance. A clear record of every contribution will not only facilitate releasing and managing catalogs, but play an increasingly bigger role in which music gets heard, and we’re proud to back Ruhan and the CHAOS team building it.
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Founder perspective
Founder Ruhan Verma, a self-taught musician and producer, started CHAOS after years of frustration with fragmented creative workflows. Verma launched the project 18 months ago and has grown it into a hybrid UK–US operation. The startup now has a six-person team split between London and New York, a London office with an in-house recording studio and a waitlist surpassing 15,000 creators.
In the announcement, Ruhan Verma, Founder at CHAOS, said:
I started producing music when I was 13, and over the years I’ve been lucky enough to work with some incredible artists and producers. So much effort that goes into the creative process gets lost purely because of disconnected tools and current creator tools felt outdated. This investment will support our growth and ambition to be the single source of truth in the industry, just like Notion is for businesses. There is an opportunity here to improve tools available to creators and build CHAOS, to replace music’s outdated and fragmented software. We are grateful to our investors and industry leaders backing our vision.
The bigger picture
CHAOS’s fundraising and product focus reflect two broader trends: investors and founders targeting the tooling layer beneath creative industries, and growing attention to provenance and attribution in music as streaming and catalogue deals become more data-driven. The involvement of distribution platforms such as Amuse underlines a demand for tools that can plug into release pipelines and rights management.
The timing — scaling up development ahead of a public launch in the UK and US — follows a familiar cross-Atlantic playbook for startups in creative tech: validate early with a creator community, then use strategic partnerships and capital to push into larger markets.
This deal adds to a steady stream of funding into UK and European music and media startups focused on infrastructure rather than consumer-facing discovery. If CHAOS can prove provenance reduces friction in collaboration and rights clearance, it may find a receptive market among artists, producers and labels that want both creative flexibility and clearer ownership records.
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