Following several reports earlier this week that ElevenLabs had closed another successful funding round at a valuation between $3 and $3.3 billion, the company has confirmed it raised a $180 million Series C co-led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth. Several new, existing, and strategic investors contributed to the funding round, including NEA, World Innovation Lab, Valor (new), Sequoia Capital, Salesforce Ventures, Smash Capital (existing), Deutsche Telekom, LG Technology Ventures, and HubSpot Ventures (strategic).

The $180 million Series C was confirmed just days over a year after ElevenLabs announced its $80 million Series B, which also marked the first occasion the company was valued at over a billion dollars. With the current funding round, ElevenLabs managed to triple its valuation. Additionally, this Series C brings ElevenLabs' total raised funds to $281 million since being founded in 2022.

About ElevenLabs

Founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs has experienced explosive growth since the launch of its platform in January 2023, making the company an indisputable leader in the AI audio technologies space. ElevenLabs reports that employees at over 60% of Fortune 500 companies are using its AI audio tools, and the totality of its users have generated the equivalent of 1,000 years of audio content on its platform. Beyond its client roster, ElevenLabs has collaborated with leading companies and creators, including NVIDIA, Perplexity, Synthesia, Bertelsmann, The New Yorker, and The Washington Post.

The last year was a particularly busy one for ElevenLabs. In addition to continued development of its generative voice AI models, ElevenLabs launched several impressive products for speech generation, multilingual dubbing, and sound effects, including: the Conversational AI, Voice Design, and Sound Effects Model tools to create everything from custom voice agents to custom voices and sound effects from text prompts, the ElevenReader app, and the Dubbing Studio localization tool. ElevenLabs has also built a Voice Library for users and voice actors to monetize their AI-generated voices. The company reports its Voice Library payouts have recently surpassed the $2 million mark.

ElevenLabs' commitment to social impact

In parallel to developing its business, ElevenLabs has launched an Impact Program, which so far has empowered 80 organizations across education, accessibility and culture by equipping them with AI voice technologies free of charge. As an example, a partnership between ElevenLabs, Bridging Voice and The Scott Morgan Foundation has helped over 1,000 individuals with voice impariments due to ALS recover their voices.

Next steps

The new funding will be used to advance research in expressive and controllable voice AI, expand tools for developers and businesses, and strengthen AI safety measures. The company, whose London, New York, and Warsaw hubs have grown from 30 to 120 employees in the past year, plans to continue its expansion with a focus on serving all languages, accents, and dialects across the world. To do this, it will expand its presence to zones such as Asia, Latin America, and the EMEA region.