ElevenLabs adds high-profile investors after annualized revenue tops $500M

ElevenLabs Inc., a developer of artificial intelligence models optimized for audio processing, today announced that several dozen investors have joined its latest funding round.

The startup first closed the Series D investment in February with a $500 million haul. The raise valued it at $11 billion. 

ElevenLabs didn’t specify the dollar value of its Series D extension. However, the company did disclose that the deal included the participation of Nvidia Corp.’s NVentures startup fund along with Blackrock, Wellington Management and other large financial institutions. They were joined by more than 30 entertainment industry figures, including Jamie Foxx and Eva Longoria.

The company closed a $100 million tender offer in conjunction with the funding round. The transaction, which enabled existing investors to sell some of their shares, is the second of its kind that the company has completed in the past year. 

ElevenLabs launched its flagship Eleven v3 model in February. It can generate speech in more than 70 languages based on user-provided scripts. Compared to its predecessor, the algorithm is significantly better at complex voice synthesis tasks such as pronouncing long numbers and chemical formulas. It also added a feature that enables Eleven v3 to simulate conversations with multiple speakers.

The startup offers Elven v3 alongside more specialized algorithms. One of them, Eleven v2.5 Turbo, generates voice with average latency of about 75 milliseconds. Developers can use it to power applications that require the ability to respond to user requests in near real-time. ElevenLabs’ other specialized models focus on use cases such as generating music and transcribing speech.

Customers access the company’s models through an application programming interface and a cloud service called ElevenAgents. The latter product makes it easier to integrate the algorithms into enterprise applications. According to ElevenLabs, ElevenAgents reduces the amount of work involved in optimizing details such as how a customer service chatbot should respond to interruptions. 

The third product is called ElevenCreative. As the name suggests, it’s geared toward creative projects such as generating ad voiceover overalls. The cloud service provides access to a library of more than 10,000 AI voices. 

ElevenCreative’s flagship feature is an audio file editor called Studio 3.0. Creative professionals can use it to generate synthetic voice, music and sound effects. It’s also possible to refine the existing speech in a multimedia file. Studio 3.0 can isolate an audio segment that contains noise, remove it and add in an identical AI voice that doesn’t contain noise.

ElevenLabs disclosed today that its annualized recurring revenue has jumped to $500 million from $350 million at the start of the year. The company will use its new funding to grow its international customer service teams and extend ElevenCreative with video generation features. 

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