ElevenLabs is a voice artificial intelligence (AI) research and development company developing text-to-speech and voice cloning software. ElevenLabs makes on-demand multilingual audio support for a range of use cases, including education, streaming, audiobooks, gaming, movies, and real-time conversation. The company aims to make content universally accessible by creating realistic, versatile, and contextually aware AI audio in a number of languages. ElevenLabs develops new voice AI models and features, making them accessible via its web app and API.
On August 22, 2023, ElevenLabs launched its platform out of beta. Upon the launch, the company claimed it has more than a million registered users who have created ten years of audio content. The company's technology has been used by publishers and media platforms for audiobooks, radio content, and video games.
ElevenLabs technologies enable users to perform the following:
- Speech Synthesis—converting text into audio using a proprietary deep learning model
- VoiceLab—creating new synthetic voices or clone a real person's voice using a generative AI model
- Voice Library—sharing unique synthetic voices
- Projects—ElevenLabs' workstation for directing and editing audio
The company's text-to-speech tool supports twenty-eight languages and diverse accents. Users can select the appropriate accent and enter the text in the language of their choice. Examples of ElevenLabs' AI voice technologies in use include those below:
- Videos—allowing content creators to create audio for their videos
- Games—improving NPC dialogue or real-time narration through richer or dynamic AI voice generation
- Audiobooks—converting long-form content into audio with natural voices and tones
- Chatbots—text-to-speech tools for more natural chatbots
ElevenLabs' technology has been used to share hateful messages mimicking celebrities. In response, the company introduced new safeguards, limiting voice cloning to paid users, banning users, and releasing an AI detection tool called AI Speech Classifier. This tool is designed to detect whether an audio sample contains AI-generated content using ElevenLabs.
The ElevenLabs platform is made available through a monthly subscription. A free version for hobbyists allows users to generate audio from 10,000 characters per month and create up to three custom voices, as long as they credit ElevenLabs when using the generated audio. The company offers a range of pricing tiers with greater capacity, voices, and additional features, including voice cloning and higher-quality audio outputs.
ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski. Dabkowski is an ex-Google machine learning engineer, and Staniszewski is an ex-Palantir deployment strategist. The two friends were inspired to start ElevenLabs due to low-quality dubbing in the Hollywood films they watched growing up in their native Poland. The company has employees based in New York, London, and Warsaw.
On January 23, 2023, ElevenLabs launched its platform in beta and announced $2M in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Credo Ventures, with participation from Concept Ventures and a number of angel investors, including Peter Czaban, Tytus Cytowski, Talfan Evans, Dr Fatima Godall, Tomasz Karwatka, Piotr Karwatka, Akhil Paul, Bartek Pucek, Marta Pyrzyk, Carles Reina, Parin Shah, Charlie Songhurst and Harry Songhurst.
On June 20, 2023, ElevenLabs announced a $19M Series A round co-led by entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross alongside Andreessen Horowitz. Other participants included Creator Ventures, SV Angel, Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger, Oculus cofounder Brendan Iribe, Deepmind and Inflection AI cofounder Mustafa Suleyman, and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly. The new funding round valued ElevenLabs at $99M post-money. The company's Projects workstation and an AI detection tool were launched at the same time as the Series A announcement.
