ElevenLabs raises $180M Series C to be the voice of the digital world

• ElevenLabs raises $180M in Series C funding to advance its AI audio technology, expand its research, and develop new products that make voice and sound central to digital interactions.
• In just two years, ElevenLabs’ millions of users have generated 1,000 years of audio content and the company’s tools have been adopted by employees at over 60% of Fortune 500 companies.
• The funding will drive the next stage of AI audio, supporting research into more expressive and controllable voice AI, expanding tools for developers and businesses scaling globally, and strengthening AI safety.

30 January 2025, Global – ElevenLabs has raised $180 million in a Series C funding round to make speech the new standard for digital interaction. The round was co-led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth, with additional new investors NEA, World Innovation Lab (WiL), Valor, Endeavor Catalyst Fund and Lunate. Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Smash Capital, SV Angel, NFDG, BroadLight Capital are also increasing their support. The company is further partnering with strategic investors, including Deutsche Telekom, LG Technology Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and RingCentral Ventures. This latest funding values ElevenLabs at $3.3 billion, tripling its valuation from one year prior, and brings total funding to $281 million across four rounds since its founding in 2022.

Retrospective

Since launching its platform in January 2023, ElevenLabs has refined its voice AI models and introduced new products like Conversational AI, enabling real-time, natural speech for AI agents, and ElevenReader, a mobile app. In the past year alone, ElevenLabs has broadened its product lineup, adding tools for speech generation, voice design, sound effects, AI-powered dubbing in 32 languages, and more:

• Conversational AI. A tool for building custom, interactive voice agents for customer support, gaming, education, marketing, and more.
• Voice Design. A tool for generating custom voices from text descriptions.
• Sound Effects Model. A tool for generating sound effects from text descriptions, marking ElevenLabs’ expansion into audio AI beyond voice applications.
• ElevenReader App. An iOS and Android mobile app that converts ebooks, PDFs, and news articles into audio, making content easy to consume on the go.
• Flash Model. The fastest voice model on the market, with 75ms model latency.
• Voice Library Payouts. A platform for voice actors and users to monetize their AI-generated voices. ElevenLabs recently surpassed $2 million in payouts.
• Dubbing Studio. A localization tool that translates and edits audio content while preserving the original voices.

Together, these technologies are used by creators, developers, and businesses to power content creation, customer support, gaming, education, and accessibility, among others. ElevenLabs is proud to work with some of the world’s leading companies and creators, among them:

• Technology: NVIDIA, Perplexity, Synthesia, HeyGen, EliseAI, Wondershare, Kapwing, rabbit, Cognigy, Retell AI, Vapi, Parloa
• Media: Bertelsmann, ESPN, Aston Martin Aramco F1, Publicis, Star Sports, Lex Fridman, Andrew Huberman, Futuri
• Education: Praktika, Chess.com, SchoolAI, Synthesis, Articulate
• Publishing: TIME, The New Yorker, Harper Collins, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Storytel
• Gaming: Inworld, Paradox Interactive, Magicave, Don’t Nod, AMGI Studios

ElevenLabs has partnered with major enterprises and institutions, while capitalizing on growing consumer demand. Since January 2023, creators have shared over 5,000 voices in ElevenLabs’ Voice Library and earned more than $2 million in rewards. The company has also launched its Impact Program, offering its technology for free to organizations that can benefit from AI developments, partnering with 80 organizations across accessibility, education, and culture. ElevenLabs has worked with Bridging Voice and The Scott Morgan Foundation to provide AI voices to individuals with ALS, and over 1,000 individuals with speech impairments have reclaimed their voices through the program. In the cultural space, ElevenLabs partnered with KADIST and the Centre Pompidou in Paris to bring AI-generated plays to life. The company has also empowered communities in Norway and Pakistan through educational and entrepreneurial initiatives. ElevenLabs believes a local focus is key to making technology relevant, which is why it has expanded into Poland and India, to invest in AI talent and development. The new Warsaw R&D center will serve as a hub for CEE talent, while the India team focuses on extending Indic language coverage and AI programs.

Digital interactions often fall short of being realistic or engaging. ElevenLabs pioneers solutions to make them seamless and expressive. One key effort is its Conversational AI tool, which, just two months after launch, has already enabled developers to build more than 250,000 conversational AI agents. Fortune 500 companies have also adopted ElevenLabs at scale, with employees at over 60% of them using its platform and API. ElevenLabs’ models have localized more than 1 million hours of audio, read aloud 1 million hours of text from ebooks, PDFs, and news articles through ElevenReader, and produced more than 10 million sound effects. Together, these milestones represent 1,000 years of AI audio generated with ElevenLabs.

Mission and future plans

At its core, ElevenLabs has always been, and will continue to be, an AI research company, with a focus on driving development in the AI audio space. CTO and TIME Magazine AI Top 100 Innovator, Piotr Dąbkowski, leads a research team focused on breakthroughs in AI audio generation. The company has grown from 30 to 120 employees in the past year, with its main hubs in London, New York, and Warsaw.  ElevenLabs is on a mission to build the singular most comprehensive audio AI platform in the world, solve AI audio intelligence, and make all information accessible in any voice, language, and sound.

The Series C funding will drive the next stage of AI audio, supporting research into more expressive and controllable voice AI, expanding tools for developers and businesses scaling globally, and strengthening AI safety. As ElevenLabs furthers its research, the company recognizes the need to build products that harness its innovations effectively and deploy them safely. As it heads into 2025, ElevenLabs is focused on making its AI audio platform more collaborative, increasing access to cutting-edge research, advancing its conversational AI agents, and expanding its tools and features to mobile for broader use and impact. The company is also focused on serving all languages, accents, and dialects across the world. It is expanding its reach and deepening its presence in regions like Asia, LATAM, and EMEA. The company is working with key partners, including strategic investors joining this funding round, to ensure that its technology has the necessary nuance.

“Speech is how we naturally communicate. This funding moves us closer to a world where digital interactions happen by voice - fluid, natural, and as effortless as a conversation,” says Mati Staniszewski, CEO of ElevenLabs.

“Voice is becoming a key part of how we interact with technology, and ElevenLabs is making it work at scale. We’re thrilled to continue to support their work in building the next generation of AI," said David George, general partner and head of a16z's Growth Fund.

"We believe ElevenLabs is redefining the way we connect with digital environments, placing voice at the very heart of these transformative interactions. We are thrilled to partner with such an innovative team and contribute to their extraordinary journey to help reshape the future of voice technology," said Seth Pierrepont, General Partner at ICONIQ Growth.

ElevenLabs is hiring across research, engineering, and product. For more information, visit elevenlabs.io/careers.