ElevenLabs lands $80M round, launches marketplace of AI-powered cloned voices.
ElevenLabs, an AI voice startup founded by former Google and Palantir employees, has hit the unicorn status. The company announced it has raised $80 million in a series B round of funding, growing its valuation ten-fold to $1.1 billion.
The investment has been co-led by existing investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and former Apple AI leader Daniel Gross, with participation from Sequoia Capital and SV Angel. It comes six months after the $19 million series A round that valued the company at about $100 million.
ElevenLabs, which has mastered the art of using machine learning for voice cloning and synthesis in different languages, said it plans to use the capital to advance its research and build on the products on offers. It also announced a bunch of new features, including a tool for dubbing full-length movies and a new marketplace where users will be able to sell their cloned voice for money.
Former Google machine learning engineer Piotr Dabkowski and ex-Palantir deployment strategist Mati Staniszewski, who both hail from Poland, witnessed this problem firsthand when they saw poorly dubbed movies. This challenge inspired them to launch ElevenLabs, a company on a mission to make all content universally accessible in any language and voice with the power of AI.
Staniszewski, said, “We are constantly entering into new B2B partnerships, with over 100 established to date. AI voices have wide applicability – from enabling creators to enhance audience experiences, to broadening access to education and providing innovative solutions in publishing, entertainment, and accessibility,”
“Before sharing a voice, users must pass a voice captcha verification by reading a text prompt within a specific timeframe to confirm their voice matches the training samples. This, along with our team’s moderation and manual approval, ensures authentic, user-verified voices can be shared and monetised,” the founder and CEO said.
