ElevenLabs, a pioneering voice AI research and deployment company, has announced a monumental $80M (approximately €73.46M) Series B funding round, catapulting the company into unicorn territory with a valuation of $1.1B (nearly €1.01B), as reported by Bloomberg.
The investment round saw leadership from Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and was further supported by Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Smash Capital, BroadLight Capital, and Credo Ventures.
Alongside the funding, ElevenLabs unveiled several groundbreaking product developments, including a comprehensive Dubbing Studio for movie dubbing, a Voice Library marketplace for users to monetize their AI voices, and an early-preview Mobile App reader for instant text-to-audio conversion.
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Founding and Mission
Founded in 2022 by ex-Google machine learning engineer Piotr Dąbkowski and ex-Palantir deployment strategist Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs is at the forefront of natural speech synthesis. The company empowers users to create AI voices across languages and accents, capable of expressing a wide range of emotions and intonations. From its inception, ElevenLabs has grown its team from 5 to 40 employees and is now utilized by employees at 41% of Fortune 500 companies, generating over 100 years of audio content.
Funding Utilization and Safe AI Development
The newly acquired funds will be directed towards enhancing product offerings and responsibly deploying AI technology across various sectors, including entertainment, education, and accessibility. ElevenLabs prioritizes the safe development of AI, launching an AI Speech Classifier to verify content generated by ElevenLabs and expanding its coverage across more voice AI models.
Vision and Industry Impact
Co-founders Dąbkowski and Staniszewski are committed to transforming interaction with content by breaking down language and communication barriers, aiming to make content universally accessible. In 2023, ElevenLabs expanded its B2B partnerships across publishing, conversational AI, media, and gaming sectors, developing a suite of tools for lifelike text-to-speech, voice cloning, and speech-to-speech translation.
Community-Oriented Products
The Voice Library marketplace and Professional Voice Cloning tools are community-oriented innovations, allowing users to share and monetize their voices while ensuring safety through Voice Captcha verification.
Shaping the Future of Accessibility and Communication
With this significant funding round and series of product innovations, ElevenLabs is poised to further shape the future of accessibility and communication, making strides in the voice AI industry.
