ElevenLabs is a voice-AI startup founded in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski, former Palantir and Google engineers, that develops neural Text-to-speech and Voice cloning technology. The company's models generate highly naturalistic synthetic speech in dozens of languages and can clone a specific person's voice from a short audio sample, positioning it as one of the leading providers of consumer- and enterprise-facing voice-generation tools alongside real-time dubbing and multilingual localization features that rely in part on Speech recognition.
History
ElevenLabs launched its first public beta in early 2023 and quickly attracted attention for voice quality that many listeners found difficult to distinguish from human recordings, a marked jump from earlier-generation TTS systems. The company raised successive funding rounds through 2023 and 2024, reaching a valuation above $1 billion by 2024 and continuing to grow through 2025 with additional rounds backing further model development and a broader product suite, including a dubbing studio, a reader app for converting text and articles to speech, and API access for developers building voice into other applications.
Technology and products
ElevenLabs' core offering combines a text-to-speech engine with voice-cloning tools that let users create a synthetic replica of a voice from a few minutes, or in some modes seconds, of reference audio. The company built a Voice Library marketplace where creators can license their cloned voices, and expanded into speech-to-speech conversion, sound-effect generation, and multilingual dubbing that preserves a speaker's original voice and emotional tone across languages. These products are used in audiobook production, video game localization, podcasting, and accessibility tools, and compete with offerings from larger labs bundling voice into broader multimodal assistants.
Concerns and safeguards
The realism of ElevenLabs' voice cloning drew early concern about misuse for fraud, political disinformation, and non-consensual impersonation, echoing wider worries about deepfakes. In early 2023, cloned celebrity voices were used to generate offensive audio clips that circulated online, prompting the company to restrict free-tier cloning and add moderation. ElevenLabs has since implemented safeguards including AI watermarking of generated audio, an opt-in no-go-voices list to block impersonation of public figures without consent, and verification requirements for professional voice cloning. The company's growth is frequently cited in discussions of the wider generative-audio wave alongside AI music generation tools such as Suno, and its cloning technology is regularly referenced in reporting on AI-enabled voice-fraud scams and the broader challenge of provenance for synthetic media.