AI Voice Company ElevenLabs Raises $80 Million in Series B Funding, Valuation Exceeds $1 Billion
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AI voice synthesis startup ElevenLabs announced the completion of an $80 million Series B funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, and others. Other participants in this round include Sequoia Capital, Smash Capital, SV Angel, BroadLight Capital, and Credo Ventures. Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs was co-founded by former Google machine learning engineer Piotr Dabkowski and former Palantir deployment strategist Mati Staniszewski.
ElevenLabs develops AI-based tools for creating and editing synthetic voices. The company's most well-known product is a browser-based voice generation application that allows users to create realistic voices by adjusting parameters such as pitch, emotion, and tone. Users can freely use default voices to read input text, while paid users can upload voice samples to customize new voice styles. ElevenLabs is also dedicated to developing voice generation technology for creating audiobooks, dubbing for films and TV shows, and character voices for games. This funding round brings ElevenLabs' total financing to $101 million, elevating the company's valuation to over $1 billion—a significant increase from its approximate $100 million valuation in June last year. ElevenLabs intends to allocate the new funds toward product development, infrastructure and team expansion, AI research, and strengthening security measures to ensure the responsible and ethical advancement of AI technology.
Despite its achievements in voice synthesis, ElevenLabs has faced some controversies. Reports indicate that some users have exploited its voice cloning tools to spread hate speech and impersonate celebrities to make threatening statements. The company has taken steps to identify and penalize users violating its terms of service and has introduced a detection tool designed to recognize voices generated by its platform. ElevenLabs plans to further refine this tool to identify voices produced by other AI voice-generation models and collaborate with distribution platforms to make the tool available on third-party platforms.
Additionally, ElevenLabs has drawn criticism from voice actors who claim the company used their voice samples without authorization. In some cases, the company's technology has reportedly been misused in harassment campaigns, including the dissemination of maliciously cloned voices impersonating actors to share private information. One of ElevenLabs' solutions is to establish a voice marketplace where users can create, verify, and share voices, and receive compensation when others use these voices. Although the marketplace is currently in a trial phase, ElevenLabs plans to launch it more broadly in the coming weeks, enabling users to leverage AI voice technology on a wider scale.
ElevenLabs' recent funding will help solidify its leadership position in the AI voice synthesis field and maintain its competitiveness in the rapidly growing synthetic voice market.