ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs is a British-Polish artificial intelligence voice synthesis company founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, former senior engineers at Palantir and Google. The company is headquartered in London with operations in Warsaw and develops the ElevenLabs AI voice-and-audio platform, including text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, voice cloning, dubbing, and conversational voice agent capabilities. As of February 2026, ElevenLabs raised $500 million Series D at an $11 billion valuation, led by Sequoia Capital with Andreessen Horowitz quadrupling its position and ICONIQ Capital tripling. The company is widely characterized as the principal AI voice synthesis platform globally and reported approximately $330 million annualized revenue at the end of 2025.

At a glance

• Founded: 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski in London.
• Status: Private. Series D in February 2026 valued the company at $11 billion. Reported active IPO-track preparation.
• Funding: Approximately $700 million-plus cumulative private capital. Earlier rounds at progressively higher valuations. Series D of $500 million in February 2026 at $11 billion valuation, led by Sequoia Capital with Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ participation.
• CEO: Mati Staniszewski, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Former Palantir engineer.
• Other notable leadership: Piotr Dąbkowski, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. Former Google engineer.
• Open weights: No. ElevenLabs' voice synthesis models are closed-weights commercial products gated through the ElevenLabs platform and API.
• Flagship products: ElevenLabs Multilingual (text-to-speech), Voice Cloning, Dubbing (multi-language video and audio dubbing), Conversational AI (voice agent platform), ElevenLabs Studio.

Origins

ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, who had earlier been senior engineers at Palantir Technologies and Google respectively. The founding thesis emphasized building higher-quality AI voice synthesis than existing offerings, with explicit attention to emotional expressiveness and multilingual capability that contemporary text-to-speech offerings lacked.

The 2022 to 2024 period saw ElevenLabs build commercial traction primarily through bottoms-up consumer-and-prosumer adoption, with growth among podcasters, audiobook narrators, content creators, and other users. The product's voice-cloning capability and multilingual coverage (over 30 languages) drove early growth.

The 2024 to 2026 funding trajectory was substantial. The Series D of $500 million in February 2026 led by Sequoia Capital, with increases from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz (quadrupling) and ICONIQ Capital (tripling), valued the company at $11 billion. Staniszewski publicly noted that the company was building toward an IPO.

The 2025 to 2026 period saw ElevenLabs expand into adjacent product categories. The Conversational AI platform launched as the principal voice-agent capability, providing developers with infrastructure for building voice-based AI assistants and applications. The Dubbing product expanded into enterprise-content-localization markets, with growth among media and entertainment customers.

Mission and strategy

ElevenLabs' stated mission is to make all content accessible in any language and any voice. The strategy combines voice-synthesis foundation-model research, dubbing-and-localization workflow products, and conversational voice-agent infrastructure into an integrated AI voice-and-audio platform.

The competitive premise is that AI voice synthesis is a structurally distinct market from text-and-image AI, with specialized research depth and enterprise-and-content-creator demand. The post-2024 expansion into conversational voice agents positions ElevenLabs in the broader agentic-AI commercial market.

Revenue is split approximately 50-50 between enterprise and consumer customers as of December 2025, with the mix expected to shift toward enterprise (60-40 by December 2026, 70-30 the following year) as the conversational AI and enterprise-dubbing products scale.

Models and products

• ElevenLabs Multilingual / Eleven v3. Text-to-speech foundation models supporting over 30 languages. Eleven v3 is the current flagship, with step-changed expressiveness over earlier generations. Principal commercial product.
• Voice Cloning. Voice synthesis from voice samples. Supports both instant cloning (from short samples) and professional cloning (from longer recorded sessions).
• Dubbing. Multi-language video-and-audio dubbing product. Translates and synthesizes speech in source-voice characteristics across languages.
• Conversational AI. Voice-agent platform for developers building voice-based AI assistants and applications.
• ElevenLabs Studio. Long-form audio production product including audiobook generation, podcast production, and other content creation.
• ElevenLabs API. Developer-facing API for voice synthesis integration.

Benchmarks and standing

ElevenLabs' voice synthesis quality is widely characterized in industry coverage as the leading AI voice synthesis platform globally, with competitive differentiation from OpenAI Voice (TTS), Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, AWS Polly, Microsoft Azure Speech, and other voice-synthesis offerings. Specific benchmark comparisons in voice synthesis are less standardized than in text generation.

The reported $330 million annualized revenue at end-of-2025, with growth into 2026, anchors ElevenLabs' commercial standing. The subscription customer base across podcasters, audiobook narrators, content creators, and enterprise media customers reflects product-market fit.

Leadership

• Mati Staniszewski, Co-Founder and CEO. Former Palantir engineer.
• Piotr Dąbkowski, Co-Founder and CTO. Former Google engineer.

Funding and backers

The principal funding rounds:

• Earlier rounds (2022 to 2024): Multiple rounds with Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ Capital, Sequoia Capital, and other investors.
• Series C (January 2025): Round at approximately $3 billion valuation.
• Series D (February 2026): $500 million at $11 billion valuation, led by Sequoia Capital with Andreessen Horowitz quadrupling and ICONIQ tripling.

NVIDIA strategic-investor participation has been across multiple rounds, reflecting NVIDIA's broader AI-ecosystem strategic-investment portfolio.

Industry position

ElevenLabs occupies a structurally distinctive position in the AI voice-and-audio ecosystem. The combination of the leading AI voice synthesis platform, the multilingual coverage, the post-2024 expansion into conversational voice agents and dubbing, the Series D investor support, and the reported IPO trajectory differentiates ElevenLabs from peer voice-AI offerings.

Industry coverage frequently characterizes ElevenLabs as the principal AI voice synthesis platform globally, with differentiation from cloud-platform voice services and from peer Insurgent voice-AI organizations.

Strategic risks include intensifying competition from cloud-platform voice services, frontier-AI labs expanding into voice (OpenAI Voice, Google Cloud TTS), and peer voice-AI Insurgents. Strategic strengths include the voice-synthesis quality leadership, the multilingual coverage, the founder-team continuity, the conversational AI strategic extension, and the private-capital base.

Competitive landscape

• OpenAI Voice (TTS, Realtime). Frontier-AI lab voice synthesis competitor.
• Google Cloud TTS, AWS Polly, Microsoft Azure Speech. Cloud-platform voice synthesis services.
• Suno, Udio. Music-generation peers; less direct voice-synthesis competition.
• PlayHT, Resemble AI, Murf, WellSaid Labs. AI voice-synthesis Insurgents.
• HeyGen, Synthesia. Video-generation peers with voice synthesis components.
• Deepgram, Speechmatics. Speech-to-text peers; less direct voice-synthesis competition.

Outlook

• The IPO timing and post-IPO trading.
• Continued revenue growth from the $330 million end-of-2025 base.
• The competitive dynamic with OpenAI Voice, cloud-platform voice services, and peer Insurgent voice-AI organizations.
• Continued senior research-and-engineering talent recruitment.
• Conversational AI platform commercial growth and the broader agentic-voice-AI market evolution.

Sources

• ElevenLabs official site. Product reference.
• TechCrunch: ElevenLabs raises $500M from Sequoia at an $11 billion valuation. February 2026 Series D coverage.
• CNBC: Nvidia-backed AI voice startup ElevenLabs hits $11 billion valuation. Series D and IPO-track coverage.
• SiliconANGLE: Voice AI startup ElevenLabs more than triples valuation. Series D detailed analysis.
• Wikipedia: ElevenLabs. Comprehensive company history reference.