Within just two years of its founding by former Google and Palantir employees, ElevenLabs, an AI voice startup, has achieved unicorn status. The company recently announced an $80 million Series B funding round, boosting its valuation tenfold to $1.1 billion.
This investment is co-led by existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and former Apple AI leader Daniel Gross, along with contributions from Sequoia Capital and SV Angel. This round follows a $19 million Series A round six months prior, which valued ElevenLabs at approximately $100 million.
Pioneering AI Voice Technology
ElevenLabs specializes in using machine learning for voice cloning and synthesis across multiple languages. The newly acquired capital will enhance its research and product offerings. The company has also introduced several new features, including a dubbing tool for full-length movies and a marketplace where users can sell their cloned voices.
Making Content Universally Accessible
As dialects and languages vary widely, localized content production has traditionally focused on mainstream languages, often relying on manual dubbing that lacks fidelity to the original content. Founders Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski, both from Poland, witnessed the challenges of poor dubbing, which motivated them to create ElevenLabs. Their mission is to democratize access to content by leveraging AI.
Since its launch in 2022, ElevenLabs has achieved significant milestones. Initially recognized for its natural-sounding AI text-to-speech model in English, it has since expanded capabilities with Eleven Multilingual versions 1 and 2, now supporting multiple languages, including Polish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Hindi. The Voice Lab feature allows users to clone their voices or generate synthetic voices, transforming text into audio content.
“ElevenLabs’ technology utilizes context awareness and high compression to deliver ultra-realistic speech. Our proprietary model understands word relationships and adjusts delivery based on context, dynamically predicting thousands of voice characteristics,” explained Staniszewski.
A Growing User Base
In mere months, ElevenLabs attracted over a million users. The launch of AI Dubbing, a speech-to-speech conversion tool, allows content creators to translate audio and video into 29 languages while maintaining the original speaker's voice and emotions. Notably, 41% of the Fortune 500 are among its clientele, including prominent publishers like Storytel, The Washington Post, and TheSoul Publishing.
“Currently, we have forged over 100 B2B partnerships. AI voices have extensive applications from enhancing audience experiences to broadening educational access,” Staniszewski noted.
Introducing the Dubbing Studio
To further innovate its product suite, ElevenLabs is rolling out the Dubbing Studio workflow, enhancing the AI Dubbing tool. This new workflow provides professionals with robust tools to dub full-length movies in various languages while generating and editing transcripts, translations, and timecodes. However, it currently does not include lip-syncing, meaning the lip movements in the original video remain unchanged.
New Marketplaces and Accessibility Features
Additionally, ElevenLabs is introducing an accessibility app that transforms text or URLs into audio and a Voice Library that allows users to monetize their AI-cloned voices. Users can set terms for availability and compensation, although sharing requires a multi-step verification process to ensure authenticity.
“The voice verification involves a captcha process to confirm the voice matches training samples, supported by our moderation team,” the CEO remarked.
As these features become available in the upcoming weeks, ElevenLabs aims to attract users from various sectors. With this funding—bringing its total to $101 million—the company plans to bolster its research on AI voice technology, enhance infrastructure, and develop targeted products, all while implementing robust safety controls including an AI audio classifier.
“Over the coming years, we aim to establish ourselves as the global leader in voice AI research and product deployment,” Staniszewski stated.
Competitors in the AI voice generation space include MURF.AI, Play.ht, and WellSaid Labs. According to Market US, the global market for these tools was valued at $1.2 billion in 2022 and is projected to approach $5 billion by 2032, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 15.4%.
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