Harmix was a profitable music startup, before AI tools tempted them to build something new

Toronto-based Harmix Group got its start building an algorithmic search engine for the music industry. Along the way, the team was enamoured by another technical problem: fixing data fragmentation for small businesses using AI.

Harmix was an early entrant to the field of multimodal AI, or applying machine learning principles to different media. Founded in 2018, the company patented technology to let users search for images, video, and music using natural-language descriptions.

“When you have a large library of sometimes millions of compositions, there is no way you would have the time to scroll and to listen to all the previews,” co-founder Nick Shcherban said in an interview. Harmix’s search engine allows users to find the clip they’re looking for just by describing its vibe or uploading a reference file.

“We started developing agents internally to help us, because we had a small team.”
Nazar Ponochevnyi
Harmix Group

That proved particularly useful for music and television producers. The Harmix API has licensed its tech to media brands such as Red Bull and Sky TV, the latter of which used it to put together the music for Game of Thrones spin-off House of Dragons. A recent partnership with music rights management system OpenPlay also put Harmix’s API in the hands of decision-makers at Disney and Warner Brothers.

Co-founder and CEO Nazar Ponochevnyi, who is originally from Ukraine and a graduate researcher at Toronto’s Vector Institute, claimed this part of the company is profitable. But the 20-person company recently found inspiration for a new business direction elsewhere. “Once we had so much traction with the music, image and video search API, we started developing agents internally to help us, because we had a small team,” Ponochevnyi said.

The acceleration of generative AI tools allowed them to kickstart a proactive AI manager (PAM) business, almost like a side-hustle within their own startup. During a regular investor update, the company shared their new agentic interests, and an undisclosed Canadian family office offered them $1 million USD for the new project.

Businesses across sectors are facing pressure to improve efficiency by adopting AI, but smaller enterprises lag behind, according to a federal policy paper. But integrating AI without properly connecting different data sources and applications—like Google Drive and Slack—could lead to extra work rather than a streamlined process, Ponochevnyi said. Harmix’s new product aims to help small and medium-sized businesses unify data across these fragmented tools.

Part of Harmix’s decision to build in this new direction came from ecosystem energy.

“With all this hype from OpenClaw, people are really excited,” Ponochevnyi said, referring to the open-source AI agent that performs tasks autonomously. “They want somebody who has expertise integrating those agents into real businesses.”

Harmix will use the funds for hiring engineers and product development as it targets data security certifications and private cloud hosting options. After landing European manufacturing company, Modern Expo, as a client, the company is assembling a cohort of 10 companies it can work with as “design partners” to test and improve its new product on their workflows.

Feature image courtesy Harmix Group.