Midnight Labs announced a strategic investment from Sony Innovation Fund to accelerate the expansion of its AI-powered intellectual property protection platform across the U.S., Japan, and broader Asia-Pacific region. The funding will support the growth of the company’s agentic Enforcement Engine, which is designed to combat piracy, deepfakes, and AI-generated infringement targeting entertainment, gaming, and content industries.
Based in Dublin, Tokyo, and San Francisco, Midnight Labs positions itself as “The Internet’s Delete Button,” helping rights holders identify, verify, and remove infringing content at scale. The company said its platform automates enforcement workflows that traditionally required weeks of manual effort, reducing processes involving scanning, detection, analysis, verification, and removal to minutes or seconds.
According to the company, it has removed more than 2.8 billion pieces of infringing content to date and currently protects major streaming platforms, podcast networks, talent agencies, creators, and Fortune 100 executives. Through its creator-focused product, Ceartas, Midnight Labs also supports leading content creators and creator-economy brands by safeguarding content, brand identity, and digital likenesses.
The company said its platform secures the full intellectual property zchain, including creator content, brand identity, NILV (Name, Image, Likeness, and Voice), character likenesses, studio assets, and audio and video content, including live streams. Midnight Labs continuously monitors more than 75 million sources, including dark web destinations and non-compliant platforms, identifying threats in real time and automating takedown, filing, and compliance workflows.
A key differentiator highlighted by Midnight Labs is its ability to generate court-admissible evidence at scale. The platform automatically creates forensic evidence packages that include time-stamped screenshots, cryptographic hashes, HTML source archives, and network records, providing rights holders with litigation-ready documentation without requiring manual collection.
The company believes the opportunity is particularly significant in Japan and across APAC, where manga piracy remains widespread and increasingly sophisticated piracy operations are leveraging AI-generated infringement techniques. The investment from Sony Innovation Fund is expected to strengthen Midnight Labs’ regional presence and help the company address emerging digital piracy threats before they can cause widespread damage.
KEY QUOTES:
“Generative AI has industrialized piracy, exposing IP holders to both financial loss and real-time reputational damage. A single deepfake of a CEO, created in seconds and distributed across thousands of sites, can cause immediate, catastrophic harm before a legal team can even open a ticket. Traditional digital rights management built on manual processes simply cannot keep pace with AI-generated infringement, leaving legal and content protection teams overwhelmed. We make enforcement autonomous by scanning, detecting, proving and removing stolen content faster than it can spread, returning control to IP holders over their content, reputation and revenue. The backing of Sony Innovation Fund accelerates that mission.”
Dan Purcell, CEO and Founder, Midnight Labs
“Midnight Labs is tackling an important and increasingly complex problem for the creative industries. We are pleased to support the team and look forward to collaborating as they build solutions for rights holders worldwide.”
Antonio Avitabile, Managing Director, Sony Ventures EMEA
