ElevenLabs, the AI voice startup that once stirred backlash in Hollywood, is now emerging as one of the defining companies of the generative audio wave — and investors are betting big on its next chapter.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs initially faced legal and reputational headwinds after its voice-cloning tech was misused online and drew pushback from actors over digital voice rights. The company has since settled disputes, leaned into licensing, and repositioned itself as a partner to the creative industry rather than a disruptor working against it.
The company has announced raising $500 million in Series D funding at an $11 billion valuation, CEO and co-founder Mati Staniszewski said. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq, bringing total funding to nearly $800 million. The new valuation more than triples the company’s worth from a year ago — a signal of how quickly AI-native platforms are scaling.
On the product side, ElevenLabs is evolving from a voice-generation tool into a full-stack conversational AI platform. Its technology now powers use cases across customer service, sales, marketing, and training, where AI voice agents are replacing traditional call flows and static audio systems.
The company has also gone deep into the creator and licensing economy. It has partnered with major figures, including Michael Caine, who licensed his voice, and Matthew McConaughey, who uses the platform to translate his voice into Spanish for his newsletter. ElevenLabs recently launched a voice marketplace, allowing brands to license voices of iconic personalities, and expanded into adjacent creative tools with an AI music generator. In January, it released “The Eleven Album,” a collaborative project with musicians designed to showcase its AI-driven music production capabilities.
"As with every new announcement, our priority is shipping. Over the coming days, we’re rolling out a new conversational model for our Agents Platform - one that’s faster and better at understanding and expressing emotion - building on the new v3 model - and our new orchestration, with an improved turn-taking system. You can try an alpha version of it today on our website."
Enterprise adoption is accelerating. Customers include Deutsche Telekom, which uses ElevenLabs voice agents in customer service, and Deliveroo, which applies the technology to streamline courier onboarding. The Ukrainian government is also using the platform in educational and public initiatives.
Financially, the growth is tracking the hype. ElevenLabs generated $330 million in annual recurring revenue last year and is targeting a 2× increase this year, according to Staniszewski. The broader vision is to reshape how humans interact with software through voice. “We want to disrupt parts of the workflow — but do it together with the industry,” Staniszewski said, noting that sentiment around AI in Hollywood is shifting from resistance to collaboration.
Sequoia partner Andrew Reed, who is joining the board, said ElevenLabs is already enabling “customer experiences that would have felt like science fiction a year or two ago.”
In January 2023, ElevenLabs launched its first public beta following a $2M pre-seed round led by Prague-based VC fund Credo Ventures – one of Central and Eastern Europe’s most prominent early-stage investors – alongside Concept Ventures. That early backing helped the startup iterate quickly on its voice AI models and establish product-market fit. Credo’s conviction in the team’s vision also signaled European investor confidence in frontier AI startups, joining the likes of its previous bets on global winners. By mid-2023, ElevenLabs had raised a $19M Series A and later expanded into Series B and C rounds with heavyweight backers like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Iconiq.
