ElevenLabs, the AI audio company behind music generation platform ElevenMusic, has completed a USD $300 million employee tender offer at a valuation of $22 billion.
That is double the $11 billion valuation the London and New York-headquartered company reached in the $500 million Series D round it announced in February.
The tender was led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price, ElevenLabs said in a blog post on Wednesday (September 30).
Two of the tender’s new investors already hold positions in the music business. GIC, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, owns 4.7% of Universal Music Group. In January, it also agreed to form a music rights-buying joint venture with Sony Music Group.
EQT, meanwhile, co-owns Believe, having taken the French music company private via a consortium with founder and CEO Denis Ladegaillerie and TCV. EQT has said it expects to be 30-35% invested in Believe – which agreed its own licensing deal with ElevenLabs in April.
The $22 billion figure is more than four times the $5.4 billion post-money valuation that rival AI music generator Suno reached in June, via its own $400 million-plus Series D.
Unlike a funding round, an employee tender offer lets staff sell existing shares to investors, with the proceeds going to the sellers rather than to the company.
Goldman Sachs, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Sapphire Ventures, and BDT & MSD also invested in ElevenLabs for the first time as part of the tender.
Existing backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, ICONIQ, D.E. Shaw, Evantic, DISRUPTIVE, and Alkeon also took part.
Two of those existing backers are invested in Suno as well: Alkeon joined the AI music generator’s Series D in June, while Lightspeed took part in the same round as an existing Suno investor.
ElevenLabs says its ElevenAgents platform now fields over 15 million conversations weekly, three times the volume it carried in February, and that the product’s annual recurring revenue has more than tripled over the same period.
The company says enterprise customers now account for 55% of its revenues.
“As we grow, it’s important to us to let our people share in some of the value they are creating for our customers and the wider world.”
Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs
“AI should interact with people the way we interact with each other,” said Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs. “Getting this right will help ensure AI diffuses widely across the economy, and everyone is able to shape and benefit from it, regardless of technical skill.
“We’re already seeing rapid adoption of expressive voice agents by enterprises and governments, who are deploying them in service of consumers and citizens. As we grow, it’s important to us to let our people share in some of the value they are creating for our customers and the wider world.”
Wellington, which co-led the tender, was among the institutional investors that joined the Series D at its third close in May.
ElevenLabs said then that it had crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue, up from $350 million at the end of 2025. The company did not publish an updated total on Wednesday.
“As ElevenLabs has grown its conversational agent business, the combination of research, product, and deployment has proved an important structural advantage,” said Emma Norchet, Partner on the Private Opportunities Fund investment committee at T. Rowe Price.
“The team is able to make improvements at every layer of the stack, allowing them to execute at high velocity and deliver immediate value for its enterprise clients.
“The rapid growth of ElevenAgents is a testament to this.”
On the music side, ElevenLabs entered the AI song generation market in August 2025, launching what is now ElevenMusic with licensing agreements from Merlin and publisher Kobalt already in place.
It has since added a deal with Believe and, on September 10, a multi-year agreement with Universal Music Group that the two firms describe as ElevenLabs’ first with a major record company.
Under that deal, ElevenLabs will build a fan platform for remixes, mashups, and “new track interpretations,” kept separate from the existing ElevenMusic app and Music API.
ElevenLabs says it now employs more than 800 people, up from the 530 it reported in May.
The $300 million offer is the company’s third employee tender since September 2025, following a $100 million offer at a $6.6 billion valuation that month and a second $100 million tender alongside the Series D in May.
“We’re committed to giving our team regular opportunities for liquidity to ensure they can participate in the value they’re creating for the company and our customers,” ElevenLabs said in its blog post.
The company says it raised its first round in 2022 at a $9 million valuation.
Announcing the Series D in February, Staniszewski said: “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.”
Rival Suno, meanwhile, said in February that it had passed 2 million paid subscribers and was on pace for $300 million in annual revenue.
Suno remains a defendant in copyright suits brought by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.Music Business Worldwide