AI audio startup ElevenLabs has raised $500 million in a Series D funding round, valuing the London and New York-headquartered company at $11 billion — more than triple its valuation from a year ago.
The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with partner Andrew Reed joining the ElevenLabs board. Investors Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ significantly increased their stakes, while Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic Capital, and BOND joined as new investors.
Other backers including BroadLight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition, and Smash Capital also participated, with additional investors expected to be disclosed later this month.
The funding round arrives 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 inked licensing agreements with prominent rightsholders, including Merlin and a potentially precedent-setting deal with publisher 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.
In September 2025, ElevenLabs secured strategic investment from chip maker NVIDIA, the world’s most valuable company by market cap, worth more than $4.2 trillion as of Thursday morning (February 5).
ElevenLabs previously raised a $180 million Series C funding round in January 2025, valuing it at $3.3 billion. Last fall, it launched a $100 million tender offer at a valuation of $6.6 billion to give its employees “an opportunity for liquidity”.
ElevenLabs initially developed AI text-to-speech technology but has since expanded into speech-to-text, sound effects, dubbing, music, and conversational AI.
Its products include ElevenAgents, a platform for deploying voice and chat agents used by the likes of Deutsche Telekom, Revolut, and the Ukrainian Government; ElevenCreative, a content creation and localization tool used by Duolingo, NVIDIA, and TIME; and ElevenAPI, which provides voice infrastructure for developers at companies including Meta, Epic Games, and Salesforce.
ElevenLabs, which has announced a major upgrade to its voice agents, says it plans to use the latest investment to “continue to expand research and product” and push forward with international expansion across London, New York, San Francisco, Warsaw, Dublin, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Bengaluru, Sydney, São Paulo, Berlin, Paris, and Mexico City.
“Mati and Piotr … have built ElevenLabs into one of the most successful and most impactful companies in the global AI ecosystem.”
ANDREW REED, ELEVENLABS
“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 honor to join their board.”
“We started by building a voice that could sound human – and we did.”
Piotr Dąbkowski, ELEVENLABS
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 optimizing them for the best product experiences that we believe will redefine the benchmarks,” he said.
“This funding helps us go beyond voice alone to transform how we interact with technology altogether.”
Mati Staniszewski, ELEVENLABS
Staniszewski added: “The intersection of models and products is critical – and our team has proven, time and again, how to translate research into real-world experiences.
“This funding helps us go beyond voice alone to transform how we interact with technology altogether. We plan to expand our Creative offering – helping creators combine our best-in-class audio with video and Agents – enabling businesses to build agents that can talk, type, and take action.
“When we started ElevenLabs, we couldn’t have imagined the scale and impact we’ve reached today, with an incredible team doing the best work of their lives. Yet we stay hungry, knowing how early this space still is, as we build toward IPO and beyond.”Music Business Worldwide
