ElevenLabs Secures $19M in Series A Round Led by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Andreessen Horowitz
In Brief
Audio AI and voice research company ElevenLabs has raised $19 million in a Series A round led by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, ex-Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross, and Andreessen Horowitz.
Launched in beta in January, ElevenLabs now has over 1 million registered users across creative, entertainment and publishing spaces.
The company has also launched new generative voice AI products, enabling anyone to create an entire audiobook on the platform.
ElevenLabs, a voice technology research and audio AI software company, has raised $19 million in a Series A round led by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, ex-Y Combinator partner Daniel Gross, and Andreessen Horowitz.
The round saw further participation from Credo Ventures and Concept Ventures. Prominent angel investors from the tech industry also joined the round. They include Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, Oculus VR co-founder Brendan Iribe, Ubiquity6 co-founder Anjney Midha, Deepmind & Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, Runway co-founder Siqi Chen, Inkitt co-founder Ali Albazaz, Reface co-founder Dima Shvets, Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly, Creator Ventures and SV Angel.
Following the funding round, Andreessen Horowitz will join the company’s board. ElevenLabs plans to use the funds to continue building its research hub focused on Voice AI and launch new products for specific market verticals, including publishing, gaming, entertainment, and conversational applications.
Commenting on the fundraise, Mati Staniszewski, CEO and co-founder of ElevenLabs, said:
“Over the last five months, we’ve seen our technology embraced by millions of creators, companies, and curious minds. We are right at the beginning of this journey and now with Nat, Daniel, and Andreessen Horowitz joining, we have the best partners as we continue on the ambitious path forward.”
Since its beta launch in January, ElevenLabs has amassed over 1 million registered users across creative, entertainment and publishing spaces, enabling independent authors to create audiobooks, developers to voice characters in video games, and support the visually impaired to access online written content.
ElevenLabs has also partnered with one of the largest audiobook publishers Storytel, global content creator platform TheSoul Publishing, game developers such Embark Studios and Paradox Interactive, and the creative media platform MNTN.
Alongside the funding announcement, the company has also launched two new generative voice AI tools as part of its suite of products. The first to be unveiled is Projects, a production workflow for editing and creating dynamic, long-form spoken content. Now available for early access, Projects will give publishers and independent authors the ability to generate entire dialogue segments, news articles, and even audiobooks on the platform.
There’s also the newly launched AI Speech Classifier, a unique product that allows users to upload audio samples and detect whether they contain AI-generated audio from the ElevenLabs. This tool is the first of its kind in generative audio and is now accessible to the public and selected partners through an API.
“Our mission is to be the ultimate tool for storytelling, dissolving language barriers and putting all audiences in the reach of all content creators in a safe and responsible way,” Staniszewski adds.
Read more:
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About The Author
Cindy is a journalist at Metaverse Post, covering topics related to web3, NFT, metaverse and AI, with a focus on interviews with Web3 industry players. She has spoken to over 30 C-level execs and counting, bringing their valuable insights to readers. Originally from Singapore, Cindy is now based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communications & Media Studies from the University of South Australia and has a decade of experience in journalism and writing. Get in touch with her via cindy@mpost.io with press pitches, announcements and interview opportunities.
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Cindy is a journalist at Metaverse Post, covering topics related to web3, NFT, metaverse and AI, with a focus on interviews with Web3 industry players. She has spoken to over 30 C-level execs and counting, bringing their valuable insights to readers. Originally from Singapore, Cindy is now based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communications & Media Studies from the University of South Australia and has a decade of experience in journalism and writing. Get in touch with her via cindy@mpost.io with press pitches, announcements and interview opportunities.
