ElevenLabs Closes $80M in New Funding and Releases New Voice Library for VO Artists
Another unicorn is minted...
ElevenLabs announced a new $80 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Sequoia, and others. Bloomberg reported that the company’s valuation shot up to $1.1 billion. That is up from a $99 million valuation in May 2023, which means the company has added a billion dollars in valuation over eight months, reflecting an 11x rise.
Product Momentum
New products and rapid customer acquisition accompanied the sharp rise in valuation. ElevenLabs said the company’s customers now include 41% of the Fortune 500 (i.e., 205 companies) and highlighted several other users in its announcement:
Throughout 2023, ElevenLabs has also expanded its presence in multiple sectors, including publishing, gaming, media, and conversational verticals, as well as forging B2B partnerships with major media houses, among them:
Publishing: Storytel, The Washington Post, Rheinische Post, Curio
Conversational AI: FlowGPT, SimpleTalk AI, Ollang, VoiceDrop, Vana, Infinitus AI
Media & Entertainment: Wondershare Filmora, Futuri Media, TheSoul Publishing
Gaming: Paradox Interactive, NetEase, Inworld AI
Based on Synthedia’s analysis, this list is a small subset of the total customer base. While the quality of ElevenLabs’ voices has certainly helped the company land new customers, its API is a key driver of growth. Quality combined with low latency and ease of use for developers is tapping into an important growth market.
Conversational AI solutions and many gaming solutions materially benefit from high-quality voices and natural interactions that can only be achieved with a low-latency streaming API. Rising interest in generative AI-powered voice assistants along with gaming solutions with realistic non-player characters (NPC) are likely to drive increased growth.
New Products
ElevenLabs new product announcements include:
A new Dubbing Studio workflow enables users to dub entire movies, as well as generate and edit their transcripts, translations, and timecodes, providing additional control over content production. These capabilities supplement the already existing AI dubbing feature which enables automated, end-to-end video localization across 29 languages.
A Voice Library marketplace which will provide a secure platform for users to earn from AI versions of their own voices. Users can create their professional AI voice replica, verify it, and share it via Voice Library. When others use these verified voices, the original creators receive compensation. Users always retain control over their voice’s availability and compensation terms. The marketplace is already generating income for a small group of alpha-users.
An early-preview of the Mobile App reader that enables instant conversion of text and URLs into audio, making it easier for users to access content in another medium while on the move. As an introductory trial, the app will be available free of charge for the first three months and users will be able to register for early access through a waiting list.
The Voice Library is not unique. Voices.ai has a similar solution for voiceover actors and an entire business workflow for marketers to create projects, contract with artists, and manage their assets. However, this segment has a lot of growth potential. The dubbing studio could be a much larger market, given the appetite for converting content into other languages.
Rising Voices
There have been many startups over the years focused on synthetic voices. However, I am only aware of one that reached nine figures in valuation. Sonantic reportedly sold to Spotify for about $115 million. Most of the companies in the space have not made it past the low eight figures of valuation.
ElevenLabs has materially changed the market. Just one year after its founding, it rocketed to a valuation that rivaled Sonantic’s nine-figure acquisition price, and in less than two years, it reached 10-figure unicorn status. ElevenLabs has a lot of competition ranging for Amazon and Google to Altered AI, Play.ht, Resemble AI, Repseecher, Veritone, Voicemod, Voices.ai, and others. However, the company offers a broader set of services than its rivals, has momentum, and is facing favorable market demand trends.
Synthetic voices and voice clones have long generated significant interest among consumers, influencers, voice actors, and businesses. However, rapid revenue growth has typically been hard to come by. That seems to be changing, and ElevenLabs is well-positioned to capture a significant share of that growth.
