AI Audio Startup ElevenLabs Secures $11B Valuation After Latest Funding Round

AI audio startup ElevenLabs has raised $500 million in a Series D funding round.

According to Music Business Worldwide, the funding round gives the startup company a valuation of $11 billion, more than triple its valuation from just a year ago.

The funding round was led by Sequoia Capital, with partner Andrew Reed joining the ElevenLabs board. Investors Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ significantly increased their stakes, with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic Capital, and BOND joining as new investors.

Other backers including BroadLight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition, and Smash Capital also participated. Additional investors are expected to be disclosed later this month.

The funding round comes six months after the company launched Eleven Music, a rival to Suno and Udio, marking its expansion beyond voice synthesis into full AI music generation. It has already landed licensing agreements with prominent rightsholders such as Merlin and Kobalt.

The funding brings ElevenLabs’ total raised to $781 million across five rounds since its founding by CEO Mati Staniszewski and CTO Piotr Dąbkowski in 2022.

ElevenLabs initially developed AI text-to-speech technology but has since expanded into speech-to-text, sound effects, dubbing, music, and conversational AI.

ElevenLabs says it plans to use the latest investment to “continue to expand research and product” and build international expansion.

“Mati and Piotr are exceptional founders and leaders,” said Reed. “They have built ElevenLabs into one of the most successful and most impactful companies in the global AI ecosystem.

“From world-leading research to mind-bending creative tools to enterprise voice agents at scale, ElevenLabs is changing how people communicate and interface with technology, with organizations and institutions, and with each other. It’s an honour to join their board.”

Co-founder Dąbkowski said: “We started by building a voice that could sound human – and we did. Today we are building foundational models across the full audio stack – text to speech, transcription, music, dubbing and conversational models with a world-leading research team.

“And we take the models even further by optimising them for the best product experiences that we believe will redefine the benchmarks."