AI Voice Startup ElevenLabs Secures $80M and Launches Marketplace for Cloned Voices

In just two years since its launch, the AI voice startup ElevenLabs, founded by former employees of Google and Palantir, has reached unicorn status. The company announced that it successfully raised $80 million in a Series B funding round, propelling its valuation to an impressive $1.1 billion.

The funding round was co-led by prominent investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross, who previously led AI development at Apple. Other key participants included Sequoia Capital and SV Angel. This investment follows a $19 million Series A round six months ago, which had valued the company at approximately $100 million.

Advancing AI Voice Technology ElevenLabs, known for its breakthroughs in voice cloning and synthesis through machine learning (ML), plans to use the new capital to further its research and expand its range of products. The startup has also revealed several new features, including a tool for dubbing full-length movies and a marketplace where users can monetize their cloned voices.

These new offerings are expected to roll out in the coming weeks.

Overcoming the Language Barrier In a world where languages and dialects vary across regions, localizing content for global audiences has always been a challenge. The traditional approach focused on English or other widely spoken languages, using dubbing artists to create versions in select languages for specific markets. However, these manual dubbing processes often failed to capture the authenticity of the original content. Moreover, scaling such efforts for broader distribution was difficult, especially for smaller production teams.

Piotr Dabkowski, a former Google machine learning engineer, and Mati Staniszewski, an ex-Palantir deployment strategist, both originally from Poland, saw this problem firsthand through poorly dubbed films. This realization led them to create ElevenLabs, with the goal of making all content accessible in any language and voice, using the power of AI.

From Humble Beginnings to Global Expansion Since its debut in 2022, ElevenLabs has steadily grown. Initially, the company gained attention with a text-to-speech model that produced natural-sounding AI voices in English. The company then expanded its technology to support multiple languages, introducing versions such as Eleven Multilingual v1 and v2, which now cater to languages like Polish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Hindi.

At the same time, the company developed the Voice Lab, a platform where users can either clone their own voices or create entirely new synthetic voices by adjusting vocal parameters. This tool allows users to convert text, such as podcast scripts, into audio content in the language and voice of their choice.

“ElevenLabs’ technology integrates context awareness and compression, delivering highly realistic speech. Instead of generating sentences one by one, our proprietary model understands word relationships and adjusts speech delivery based on the broader context. Moreover, it has no predefined features, which allows it to dynamically predict thousands of voice characteristics while generating speech,” explained co-founder Staniszewski in an interview.

A Rapidly Expanding User Base ElevenLabs has seen impressive growth since launching its beta tools, with over a million users signing up. The company has also built on its AI voice capabilities by introducing AI Dubbing, a speech-to-speech translation tool that allows users to convert audio and video content into 29 different languages while retaining the original speaker’s voice and emotional tone. The company’s customer base includes 41% of Fortune 500 companies, as well as major content publishers like Storytel, The Washington Post, and TheSoul Publishing.

“We’re continuously forming new business partnerships, with over 100 established so far. AI voices have a wide range of applications, from helping content creators enhance audience engagement to improving access to education and offering innovative solutions in the publishing, entertainment, and accessibility sectors,” noted Staniszewski.

Innovating to Meet User Needs As its user base continues to grow, ElevenLabs is focused on delivering innovative tools and features to enhance the user experience. One of these innovations is the Dubbing Studio workflow, designed to cater to the needs of professional users. This new workflow builds on the AI Dubbing tool, allowing users to dub full-length films in their preferred language while also offering the ability to edit transcripts, translations, and timecodes for greater control over the production process.

Although the Dubbing Studio supports 29 languages, it currently lacks lip-syncing capabilities—a key feature for accurate content localization.

With these developments, ElevenLabs is well-positioned to continue shaping the future of AI-driven voice technology, making content more accessible to audiences around the world.