By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.
Today we're delighted to share that portfolio company, ElevenLabs, has announced a $19m Series-A round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. ElevenLabs is a voice technology research company and world leader in audio AI software.
Back in January of this year (2023), the team opened their Beta platform, after spending 2022 developing audio AI models that could create the most versatile and contextually-aware AI voices. Since launch, ElevenLabs has amassed over 1 million registered users and generated 10+ years worth of audio content. Across our team and extended network, we have never seen a product or business accelerate at such a rate, largely driven through the speech quality being almost indistinguishable from a real human.
As always at pre-seed, it's hard to know where exactly a product or technology will sit with customers, but the ElevenLabs team have proven solid uptake from creators, game developers, publishers alike, last week announcing a B2B partnership with Storytel (DST:FRA), one of the worlds largest audiobook publishers.
We at Concept are delighted to have continued participating in this round, alongside other long-term investors Credo Ventures. Beyond the new funds, strategic angel investors including Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, Oculus VR co-founder Brendan Iribe, Ubiquity6 co-founder Anjney Midha, Deepmind & Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly, Creator Ventures and SV Angel. Storytel and TheSoul Publishing also join this round as investors. Andreessen Horowitz is taking a board seat.
This investment will be used to continue building ElevenLab’s cutting-edge research hub for Voice AI and to launch a range of additional products to support specific market verticals such as publishing, gaming, entertainment, and conversational applications.
Mati Staniszewski, CEO and co-founder of ElevenLabs, comments:
“Over the last five months, we’ve seen our technology embraced by millions of creators, companies, and curious minds. We are right at the beginning of this journey and now with Nat, Daniel, and Andreessen Horowitz joining, we have the best partners as we continue on the ambitious path forward.”
Piotr Dabkowski, CTO and co-founder of ElevenLabs, adds:
“Since our inception in April 2022 we have focused on assembling a great team - one of the key factors for long-term success - and have built a unique team of talented, passionate and hard working people. With such a wonderful set of colleagues and partners, we are well on our way to realising our ambition of completely breaking down language barriers with technology.”
You can hear more from ElevenLabs at:
Website: https://elevenlabs.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/elevenlabsio
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elevenlabsio/
