ElevenLabs, a voice technology research company, has raised an $80m Series B round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and joined by Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Smash Capital, BroadLight Capital and Credo Ventures, to cement its position as the global leader in voice AI research and product deployment.
Since its public launch, ElevenLabs has led the industry in natural speech synthesis, enabling users to create and design AI voices across a vast swathe of languages and accents, with the ability to deliver a wide range of emotions and intonations. Since launch, ElevenLabs’ users have generated over 100 years of audio, while the firm grew from 5 to 40 employees. Today, ElevenLabs technology is being used by employees at 41% of Fortune 500 companies.
ElevenLabs’ technology has been adopted across numerous verticals. It has empowered creators to enhance audience experiences with voiceovers and AI dubbing, broadened access to education, and provided innovative solutions in audiobook publishing, entertainment, and personal use, including improving accessibility. This funding will be used to further refine the company’s product offering whilst ensuring the safe deployment of AI technology.
In addition to today’s Series B announcement, ElevenLabs is also unveiling several new product developments, which will go live over the coming weeks – A new Dubbing Studio workflow enables users to dub entire movies, as well as generate and edit their transcripts, translations, and timecodes, providing additional control over content production. These capabilities supplement the already existing AI dubbing feature which enables automated, end-to-end video localization across 29 languages.
Then a Voice Library marketplace which will provide a secure platform for users to earn from AI versions of their own voices. Users can create their professional AI voice replica, verify it, and share it via Voice Library. When others use these verified voices, the original creators receive compensation. Users always retain control over their voice’s availability and compensation terms. The marketplace is already generating income for a small group of alpha-users.
An early-preview of the Mobile App reader that enables instant conversion of text and URLs into audio, making it easier for users to access content in another medium while on the move. As an introductory trial, the app will be available free of charge for the first three months and users will be able to register for early access through a waiting list.
Throughout 2023, ElevenLabs has also expanded its presence in multiple sectors, including publishing, gaming, media, and conversational verticals, as well as forging B2B partnerships with major media houses, among them:
- Publishing: Storytel, The Washington Post, Rheinische Post, Curio
- Conversational AI: FlowGPT, SimpleTalk AI, Ollang, VoiceDrop, Vana, Infinitus AI
- Media & Entertainment: Wondershare Filmora, Futuri Media, TheSoul Publishing
- Gaming: Paradox Interactive, NetEase, Inworld AI
These latest product launches and partnerships follow a period in which ElevenLabs has continuously expanded its suite of tools, all developed from in-house research. Releases have included: Speech Synthesis for lifelike text-to-speech conversion, along with a Turbo model optimized for latency; Voice Design and Voice Cloning for creating bespoke voices; Speech to Speech for transforming one voice into another. The company also released its industry-leading AI Dubbing tool, capable of automatically translating audio and video into 29 languages whilst preserving the original speaker’s voice and emotions. The company will also soon be expanding the Turbo and Speech to Speech models, which are currently available in English, to a wider set of languages.
Building on top of the research powering these features, ElevenLabs has also worked on developing advanced tools for more complex workflows, like Projects for publishing, and the Dubbing Studio for video localization. Projects streamlines editing, structuring, navigating and generating long-form content for publishers, and Dubbing Studio helps prepare content for worldwide audiences by providing hands-on control over transcript, translation, and sequence timing.
The company has also developed community-oriented products like Voice Library – an environment for sharing AI-generated voices. Previously limited to sharing artificial voices created with the Voice Design tool, Voice Library now allows users to share their own verified voice replicas made with Professional Voice Cloning as part of the newly introduced Voice Library marketplace, and earn money when others use them. To ensure the safety and integrity of the marketplace, ElevenLabs uses its Professional Voice Cloning technology to create high-fidelity voice replicas. Before sharing a voice, users must pass a Voice Captcha verification by reading a text prompt within a specific timeframe to confirm their voice matches the training samples. This process, along with ElevenLabs team’s moderation and manual approval, ensures authentic, user-verified voices are shared and monetized, creating a more secure and trustworthy environment.
A core priority for ElevenLabs is the safe and responsible development of AI, with a focus on enabling detection to ensure all AI-generated content is clearly identifiable. The company launched an AI Speech Classifier last year; a tool which can verify if an audio sample contains ElevenLabs generated content. This year, the company will work on enhancing the Classifier’s capabilities to cover more voice AI models, as well as partner with other distribution platforms for wider implementation. ElevenLabs is actively developing additional safeguards to enhance safety in the public domain.
With this Series B investment, ElevenLabs intends to cement its position as the global leader in voice AI research and product deployment. The capital will be put into advancing research, expanding infrastructure, developing new products for specific verticals, and enhancing safety measures to ensure responsible and ethical development of AI technology.
Piotr Dąbkowski, CTO of ElevenLabs, adds:
“Our team’s dedication has already made a lasting impact on voice AI. This new funding enables us to take on even bigger challenges and focus on maintaining our competitive edge in research and product development.”
Mati Staniszewski concludes:
“Our ambition remains the same – to transform how we interact with content by breaking down language and communication barriers. We’re building cutting-edge technology to make content accessible across languages – and voices – to enable everyone to connect with information and stories that matter. Our progress so far is a testament to our dedicated team and investors, and while it’s still only the beginning of our journey, together we’re helping shape the future of accessibility and communication.”
