01What it sells and who buys it
ElevenLabs provides speech generation, dubbing and conversational agents. Buyers range from creators, publishers and game studios to businesses operating support and sales workflows.
02How the business makes money
Revenue comes from creative subscriptions, metered voice APIs and enterprise agreements. Expansion into live conversational agents broadens the volume and types of work customers can purchase.
03Marketing and customer acquisition
ElevenLabs paired a public voice-quality demonstration with publishing and enterprise partnerships.
- 01
Let users test better speech generation
SourceThe founders’ experience of awkward dubbing informed natural speech generation. The January 2023 beta let creators and publishers turn long text into audio.
- 02
Expand direct trials and enterprise distribution
SourceAn open beta in 2023 let people create voices directly, and the company reported one million registered users by midyear. Publisher and gaming partnerships added business adoption. By 2026, local go-to-market teams in multiple countries supported enterprise voice-agent deployments.
- 03
Financing the next stage
SourceIn February 2026, ElevenLabs raised a $500 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital at an $11 billion valuation. It reported more than $330 million in year-end 2025 ARR and linked the round to conversational research and enterprise products.
How the growth mechanism works
- Generate a voice
- Use it in content
- Integrate through an API
- Expand into conversational work
Voice quality is directly demonstrable. A public beta reduced evaluation friction, while partnerships offered routes to large recurring workloads. Applying the technology to dubbing and customer interaction broadened the budgets it could address.
04Funding and expansion
In February 2026, ElevenLabs raised a $500 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital at an $11 billion valuation. It reported more than $330 million in year-end 2025 ARR and linked the round to conversational research and enterprise products.
More about the founding and key events
Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski grew up together in Poland, where they experienced awkward film dubbing. After working at Palantir and Google, they founded the company in 2022. Its initial product, released in January 2023, helped creators and publishers turn long texts into natural speech.
By mid-2023, the company announced one million registrations following its public beta and enterprise partners including Storytel. It built a self-service path for experiencing audio quality alongside a route for supplying businesses. Registrations measured reach, while the enterprise partnerships demonstrated another customer segment.
The company expanded into dubbing, voice APIs and enterprise conversational agents. Publishers and game companies appeared among its early partners. The same underlying voice technology reached both content production and customer service budgets.
ElevenLabs announced $330 million in ARR at the end of 2025 and an $11 billion valuation in February 2026. In September 2026, Forbes estimated each 31-year-old founder’s wealth at $1.75 billion.
↗Further reading
- 01elevenlabs.ioRead source
- 02elevenlabs.ioRead source
- 03elevenlabs.ioRead source
- 04elevenlabs.ioRead source
- 05find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.ukRead source
- 06forbes.comRead source
- 07forbes.comRead source
- 08elevenlabs.ioRead source
- 09elevenlabs.ioRead source
- 10events.fastcompany.comRead source
- 11github.comRead source