ElevenLabs

Builds voice cloning and Eleven Music generation with commercially-safe licensing from Merlin and Kobalt. Raised $500M Series C in Feb 2026; Eleven Music launched Aug 2025 with licensed training data differentiating from Suno/Udio.

Dominates AI voice synthesis; $11B valuation with strategic NVIDIA investment and only music model with major-label licensing at launch.

elevenlabs.io Foundation Models - Voice & Music

United Kingdomprivate

At a glance

Total raised

$801M

last round undisclosed

Headcount

501-1k

approximate · public range

Headquarters

London

United Kingdom

Founded

2022

4 years active

Status

Private

Foundation Models - Voice & Music

Latest valuation

$11B

Undisclosed · 2026

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Funding history

Total raised

$801M

Rounds tracked

Latest stage

Undisclosed

Latest valuation

$11B

Date	Stage	Amount	Valuation	Lead investors
Mar 12, 2026	Undisclosed	$20M	—	Robinhood
Feb 4, 2026	Series D	$500M	$11B	Sequoia Capital
Jan 30, 2025	Series C	$180M	$3.3B	Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ Growth
Jan 22, 2024	Series B	$80M	$1.1B	Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital
Jun 1, 2023	Series A	$19M	$100M	Andreessen Horowitz
Jan 23, 2023	Pre-Seed	$2M	—	Credo Ventures

Founder backgrounds

Mati Staniszewski

CEO

Studied mathematics at Imperial College London after moving to Warsaw for high school, where he met co-founder Piotr Dąbkowski. During college, organized Mathscon, a student-led mathematics conference in the UK. After graduating with top marks, briefly worked in finance at BlackRock, then spent nearly four years at Palantir, where he helped enterprises and governments deploy new technology. Built one of the leading AI voice generation companies by maintaining singular focus on audio while larger foundation model labs pursued broader multimodal approaches. Leadership style marked by practical thought leadership grounded in real-world applications rather than performative announcements.

Piotr Dabkowski

CTO

Studied engineering at Oxford and earned an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science from Cambridge, where he published research on AI-based image detection at NeurIPS. Previously worked as a software engineer at Opera Software and as a machine learning engineer at Google. Created Js2Py, an open-source JavaScript-to-Python translator with over 2M downloads. Co-founded ElevenLabs as CTO in January 2022, where he was the first researcher to cross the threshold of human-like AI speech. Brings 11 years of experience building research-driven products and production systems—expertise that shaped ElevenLabs' technical foundation in voice synthesis and music generation.

AI bull / bear

Bull case

ElevenLabs has executed a near-perfect differentiation strategy in generative audio. The $500M Series C at an $11B valuation—with NVIDIA as a strategic investor—validates both technical superiority and market dominance in voice synthesis, a category they essentially own. The NVIDIA partnership signals infrastructure advantages and potential edge in model optimization that competitors lack. The Eleven Music launch with pre-secured licensing from Merlin and Kobalt is transformative. While Suno and Udio face ongoing litigation and existential copyright risk, ElevenLabs enters music generation with commercial safety baked in from day one. This licensing moat lets them serve enterprise customers—studios, agencies, platforms—who cannot risk unlicensed models. The dual-product strategy (voice + music) creates cross-sell opportunities and positions them as the go-to generative audio platform. If music adoption mirrors voice traction, the $11B valuation looks conservative for a category-defining company with structural IP advantages.

Bear case

At $11B, ElevenLabs is priced for perfection in a rapidly commoditizing market. Voice synthesis quality gaps are narrowing fast—OpenAI's voice modes, Google's models, and open-source alternatives are improving monthly. The technical moat in voice may erode faster than the valuation implies, especially as frontier labs bundle voice into broader platforms rather than standalone offerings. On music, the licensing deals with Merlin and Kobalt are expensive and may constrain margins versus unlicensed competitors. If Suno or Udio navigate copyright challenges through settlements or legal wins, ElevenLabs' licensing costs become a structural disadvantage rather than a moat. The music model is unproven at scale—launched only in August 2025—and consumer/creator appetite for AI music remains uncertain. Enterprise adoption may be slow if output quality lags human production. The $500M raise also signals high burn and pressure to justify a decacorn valuation in a market where audio generation may ultimately be a feature, not a standalone business.

Generated by claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929 · May 1, 2026Refreshes quarterly · see disclosures

In the news

TechCrunch5/21/2026
Spotify launches an ElevenLabs-powered audiobook creation tool
Spotify and ElevenLabs partner to launch an AI audiobook creation tool for non-exclusive author publishing.

Watch

Leadership

Mati Staniszewski

CEO

in 𝕏

Piotr Dabkowski

CTO

in 𝕏

Products

Eleven v3
The most expressive text-to-speech model supporting 29 languages. Captures emotional nuance, context awareness, and natural delivery through advanced AI algorithms that understand vocal emotion, intonation, and pacing. Designed for long-form content including audiobooks, film, dramatic voiceovers, and character-driven narratives. Enables creators and enterprises to generate lifelike speech that synthesizes emotion and intent, with support for inline audio tags like [whispers], [laughs], and [excited] for fine-grained control over delivery.
Eleven Music
AI music generation platform launched August 2025 that enables users to generate studio-grade, commercially-safe music from natural language prompts. Features proprietary AI trained on licensed data from Merlin Network and Kobalt Music Group, supporting multiple genres, styles, and languages including English, Spanish, German, and Japanese. Allows creation of complete tracks with or without vocals, and includes editing capabilities for individual song sections. Cleared for commercial use across film, television, podcasts, advertising, gaming, and social media.
ElevenAgents
Developer platform for deploying conversational voice agents at scale, launched November 2024. Enables businesses to build interactive voice experiences that listen, read, and respond naturally across phone, chat, email, and WhatsApp. Features low-latency response times using Flash v2.5 model achieving sub-500ms end-to-end latency. Includes testing, monitoring, compliance tools, and integrations necessary for enterprise deployment. Empowers companies to deliver seamless customer experiences through voice-first interfaces for support, sales, and marketing applications.
ElevenCreative
All-in-one AI-native creative workspace combining voice, music, sound effects, image, and video generation. Empowers creators and marketers to generate and edit speech, music, images, and video across 70+ languages. Provides access to 10,000+ human-like AI voices plus licensing of iconic voices. Includes features like voice cloning, sound effect generation, dubbing, and transcription. Designed for professional and enterprise use with APIs, SDKs, and iOS/Android apps enabling seamless integration into production workflows and end-to-end content creation pipelines.

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