ElevenLabs, one of many extra in style startups working within the subject AI audio, stated Thursday that it has raised a Series C spherical of $180 million, valuing the corporate at $3.3 billion post-money. a16z and ICONIQ Growth are co-leading funding.
Rumors of the fundraise had been first reported by TechCrunch. The ultimate numbers affirm some however not all the particulars we beforehand reported (particularly, the general measurement of the spherical is smaller than we had heard; the valuation and lead buyers are the identical).
The funding will likely be used to proceed constructing out ElevenLabs’ audio instruments and for enterprise growth.
Mati Staniszewski, the CEO who co-founded the corporate with childhood pal Piotr Dabkowski, stated in an interview that the startup is focusing its analysis on constructing audio AI fashions which might be extra expressive and have extra management. Staniszewski added that the corporate can be specializing in “omni-models”: combining text-based fashions with its audio fashions for multimodal interactions.
There has been a frenzy of investor curiosity in ElevenLabs going again a number of months, on the again of two necessary currents. First, there was an enormous wave of hype round generative AI that has been catching plenty of corporations in its wake. Second, ElevenLabs has emerged as a serious participant amongst these offering artificial voice expertise. Dozens of main publishers and content material creators throughout verticals like media and gaming, in addition to various different tech startups, are all utilizing ElevenLabs’ expertise to energy their voice and audio options.
Unsurprisingly, that has translated into a really crowded funding spherical with plenty of distinguished names.
New buyers on this Series C embrace NEA, World Innovation Lab (WiL), Valor, Endeavor Catalyst Fund, and Abu Dhabi funding agency Lunate. Past buyers additionally collaborating embrace Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Smash Capital, SV Angel, NFDG, and expansiveLight Capital.
Alongside these, ElevenLabs can be selecting up various new strategic backers — that’s, corporations utilizing its expertise who at the moment are investing in it, too. These embrace Deutsche Telekom, LG Technology Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and RingCentral Ventures.
ICONIQ associate Seth Pierrepont will be part of the corporate’s board, alongside current board members Jennifer Li from a16z and the co-founders of the corporate.
ICONIQ has been ramping up its actions round generative AI startups. Tapping into written output, the agency additionally co-led a $200 million spherical in Writer final November.
“We have at all times felt that audio is a vital modality, and we thought there will likely be a really massive firm constructed on this class,” Pierrepont advised TechCrunch. “We have noticed ElevenLabs from its launch, and we had been impressed by the standard of the expertise, how rapidly it ascended by way of mindshare and momentum, and the depth of area experience of the founders.”
Pierrepont added that as a board member, plenty of the conversations with the corporate will likely be round creating new use circumstances for audio and discovering the suitable markets for it.
At a time when startups are nonetheless discovering it difficult to shut progress rounds, it’s notable that ElevenLabs raised its Series B spherical of $80 million, which valued it at $1 billion, only a 12 months in the past. ElevenLabs has raised a complete of $281 million thus far.
The product roadmap
In addition to a give attention to bettering its AI fashions, the corporate plans to make use of the funding to develop its conversational AI builder with an ambition to succeed in extra shoppers immediately and thru partnerships.
Last 12 months, the corporate debuted an AI conversational agent platform, and a key a part of that product was creating a speech-to-text part. Staniszewski famous that the corporate desires to enhance in that space much more.
“We need to perceive what’s being stated by you in a dialog higher. We are engaged on methods to maneuver away from solely producing content material and understanding and transcribing speech,” Staniszewski stated. “Many individuals say that speech-to-text is a solved drawback. But for a lot of languages, it’s fairly dangerous. We assume we will construct higher speech detection fashions as a result of we’ve in-house groups to annotate knowledge and provides us fast suggestions.”
The firm additionally desires to double down on creating AI-powered conversational brokers by supporting legacy communications like telephony and higher integrating completely different sorts of information sources. This is partly why it’s partnering with telcos on this spherical.
It’s additionally being utilized by its prospects to faucet into their very own archives. Last 12 months, ElevenLabs partnered with TIME publication to deploy a conversational bot for customers to ask questions on TIME Person of the Year.
Staniszewski stated the corporate envisions extra conversational AI brokers on websites: on information websites, for instance, customers would be capable to ask questions on tales or ask the bot to summarize them.
The CEO additionally famous that whereas AI-powered voice bots’ high quality has improved, the issue of sounding pure whereas reacting to people talking or emoting in several methods has not been solved but.
“The manner I communicate to you impacts the way you react or reply to me. Sometimes, I’ll be excited, or typically, I’ll be calm, and at instances, I’ll interrupt you. You will reply to me accordingly. Current-gen AI options are on the verge of being good, however they’re inferior to people,” Staniszewski stated.
ICONIQ’s Pierrepont additionally emphasised that if AI doesn’t perceive you properly when you find yourself speaking, machine communication breaks down and customers instantly lose curiosity.
ElevenLabs has principally grown its attain (and income funnel) by means of B2B partnerships. But it’s additionally going out on a direct limb, too.
In 2024, the startup launched its first purely consumer-facing product, ElevenLabs Reader, an app that reads out articles, textual content, and paperwork. Later, the corporate added the power to create a podcast with generative AI voices from paperwork and net pages — not in contrast to what you are able to do with Google’s NotebookLM. Staniszewski stated that it desires to broaden into extra client experiences.
It may very well already be doing that. TechCrunch noticed that the corporate has been testing a program on the ElevenLabs Reader app inviting customers to publish audiobooks on the platform. The firm additionally desires to present instruments to creators to have a number of voices learn out an audiobook sooner or later whereas additionally creating higher localization.
Staniszewski famous that the corporate is determining methods for customers and firms to raised distribute their content material, together with by itself app. Whether that brings it into precise direct competitors with its prospects will likely be one thing to look at. (That has been one purpose why many B2B tech corporations desire to steer clear of direct-to-consumer performs.) Notably, ElevenLabs powers voice expertise for audio content material platforms like Lightspeed-backed Pocket FM and Google-backed Kuku FM.
ElevenLabs already powers AI-generated audio on merchandise and platforms like Perplexity, Rabbit R1, Chess.com, ESPN, Lex Fridman podcast, The Atlantic, and Synthesia. The aim for the corporate is to be in additional locations and likewise personal an end-to-end dialog stack so it could generate extra experiences and insights for its prospects.
Safety
Not all of ElevenLabs’ silver linings have been with out clouds: its tech has been implicated in just a few notable misinformation campaigns. A current report from risk intelligence firm Recorded Future discovered that the corporate’s product was utilized in a Russian propaganda operation. Last 12 months, somebody used the corporate’s voice platform to create an audio deepfake of Joe Biden. In 2023, Motherboard reported that 4chan members allegedly used the AI audio era instrument to create voices that appeared like Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and Emma Watson to unfold problematic content material.
But the corporate has been fast to reply. Today, it has a coverage prohibiting “unauthorized, dangerous, or misleading impersonation.” Plus, it makes use of a mixture of machine-led and human moderation to weed out such content material. However, as the corporate grows its set of instruments and has extra direct client touchpoints, this opens the door to extra alternatives for malicious actors to search for methods to misuse it.
“As one of many frontrunners of AI audio work, we do deal with it as our accountability to construct the suitable security mechanism as we construct out the expertise. We will steadily make decisions to prioritize security over pace of deployment or industrial profit,” Staniszewski stated.
Staniszewski added that whereas the corporate follows C2PA, a typical to trace content material utilizing metadata, it additionally has a public instrument that enables anybody to examine if audio was generated by way of ElevenLabs expertise utilizing digital signatures it locations within the audio throughout era. That is also a monitor that continues to develop over time as approaches for misuse additionally change into extra refined.
