By Blake Brittain

June 23 (Reuters) - Luxembourg-based music company Jamendo has sued chipmaking giant Nvidia NVDA.O in California federal court for allegedly misusing its music and data to train audio-related AI systems.

Jamendo, owned by Winamp Group 6YW.F, said in the lawsuit filed on Monday that Nvidia copied hundreds of thousands of audio files and related metadata from its platform to train Fugatto, an AI audio generator, and Audio Flamingo, an AI language model that describes sound.

The case is one of dozens of high-stakes lawsuits brought by copyright owners against tech companies over their AI training. Spokespeople for Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit on Tuesday.

“As artificial intelligence continues to transform the music industry, we believe it is essential that creators and rights holders are properly recognized, compensated and protected," Winamp CEO Alexandre Saboundjian said in a statement.

Jamendo hosts audio tracks uploaded by independent musicians. The company created a dataset of tags describing the music by genre, instruments, mood and other categories.

According to the lawsuit, Jamendo learned in 2024 that Nvidia had used its music and data to train Fugatto and Audio Flamingo. It sent Nvidia invoices seeking payment in 2025 and sued the company in Belgium for copyright infringement last November in a separate case that is still ongoing.

Jamendo asked the California court for statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed copyright and an order blocking Nvidia from using its work.

The case is S.A. Jamendo v. Nvidia Corp, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:26-cv-06206.

For Jamendo: Todd Roberts and Kevin Isaacson of Ropers Majeski

For Nvidia: attorney information not immediately available