Today, ElevenLabs announced that it has raised an $80m Series B round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman (former GitHub CEO), and Daniel Gross and is joined by Sequoia Capital, Smash Capital, SV Angel, BroadLight Capital, and Credo Ventures to strengthen its position as the leader in voice AI.
Established in 2022, the company is officially registered in the United States and headquartered in London, with a globally distributed team.
ElevenLabs develops realistic, versatile, and contextually aware AI audio, which can generate speech in hundreds of new and existing voices in over 20 languages, including a wide range of emotions and intonations.
The company was founded by childhood friends Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski. Inspired by the "poor" dubbing of American movies they watched growing up in their native Poland, the pair set about designing a platform to eliminate the linguistic barriers of content.
Its tech includes an AI Dubbing tool capable of automatically translating audio and video into 29 languages whilst preserving the original speaker's voice and emotions.
Since launching, ElevenLabs' users have generated over 100 years of audio.
The company is also today revealing a set of new products:
- A new Dubbing Studio workflow enables users to dub entire movies, as well as generate and edit their transcripts, translations, and timecodes.
- A Voice Library marketplace that provides a secure platform for users to earn from their AI-generated voices.
- 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.
A core priority for ElevenLabs is the safe and responsible development of AI, focusing on enabling detection to ensure all AI-generated content is clearly identifiable. The company launched an AI Speech Classifier last year, a tool that 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 and partner with other distribution platforms for wider implementation. ElevenLabs is actively developing additional safeguards to enhance safety in the public domain.
Piotr Dabkowski, 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."
ElevenLabs intends to put its latest capital into advancing research, expanding infrastructure, developing new products for specific verticals, and enhancing safety measures to ensure responsible and ethical development of AI technology.
Lead image: ElevenLabs. Photo: uncredited.
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