One of my favorite quotes comes from British science fiction writer Arthur Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
So far, though, the history of audio and voice technologies has been anything but magical.
Despite decades of development, the space has been defined by difficult and labor-intensive solutions that generate clinical, robotic, and emotionless outputs. In addition, these products have struggled to deal with multiple languages and lacked accent control. As a result, use cases have remained limited and the addressable market has been artificially constrained.
But there has always been a tremendous untapped opportunity for audio and voice technologies. Voice is the most natural, emotive, and traditional form of communication – we’ve been talking to each other for 50,000 years. These technologies have the potential to create a world where generating audio content is as frictionless as having a conversation, where language barriers no longer exist, and where even those who have lost their voice are able to regain it.
With the rise of generative AI, we’re now closer to that world than we’ve ever been. Yet, unlocking the full potential of audio and voice AI requires more than just cutting-edge technology – it takes a special company with a bold vision and the ability to execute it.
That’s why we’re thrilled to share our Series C investment in ElevenLabs, a company that we believe combines revolutionary technology, best-in-class products, and visionary leadership. We couldn’t be more grateful to support the team as they redefine what’s possible for audio AI.
Turning Frustration Into Innovation
Like many great companies, ElevenLabs was born out of frustration. Growing up in Poland, best friends Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski spent their childhoods watching poorly dubbed American movies – experiences that too often stripped stories of their authenticity and emotional depth. Years later, these frustrations would inspire them to start ElevenLabs.
In 2022, after successful stints at Palantir and Google, Mati and Piotr founded the company with a simple and powerful mission: to use AI to shape the future of digital communication, ensuring audio content is understood by everyone, everywhere.
When we first met Mati in early 2024, it immediately became clear why ElevenLabs was generating so much excitement in the industry. First, Mati had an infectious and intense passion for the problem space (those dubbed Polish movies must have been terrible!). Next, he had a clear, compelling, and long-term vision for the company. And finally, he had a relentless sense of urgency to move faster.
We left that conversation convinced that we had just met a world-class founder and, given our strongly held belief that a company’s culture is set top-down, that ElevenLabs was a special company.
Pioneering the Future of Generative AI Audio
Today, we believe that ElevenLabs is the leading generative AI audio platform. The company is improving how people create and experience audio content by setting new standards in voice quality, control, language coverage, performance, and scalability.
To date, more than 1,000 years of AI audio has been generated by ElevenLabs, with millions of users ranging from individual creators, to developers, to employees at the world’s largest enterprises. For example, over 60% of the Fortune 500 have adopted ElevenLabs, including leading brands in media and entertainment, publishing, financial services, and advertising.
By combining state-of-the-art models with delightful workflow tools, the company delivers realistic, expressive, and contextually-aware audio content across a wide range of established and emergent use cases, including audiobooks, content dubbing, podcasts, AI chatbots, commercials, and video voiceovers.
As audio and voice increasingly become the user interface (UI) through which people interact with generative AI, we believe that ElevenLabs’ addressable market has the potential to grow exponentially. For example, imagine a theme park operator using ElevenLabs to perfectly clone an animated character’s voice for use in a real-world animatronic robot. Or a contact center using ElevenLabs to power a virtual voice agent to manage routing customers calls. These are the types of emergent use cases that are only possible thanks to technology like ElevenLabs.
The foundation of what makes ElevenLabs special lies in the company’s advanced models, including text-to-speech, speech-to-speech, voice cloning, voice isolator, and sound effects. These models are seamlessly integrated into an easy-to-use, robust, and flexible audio workflow platform. This vertically integrated approach, in which ElevenLabs controls the roadmap for both model and product development, is critical and enables the company to adapt, respond, and capitalize on emerging trends as the space continues to evolve.
Unlocking New Opportunities in Japan and Beyond
Thanks to the multilingual capabilities of ElevenLabs’ technology, the company has experienced significant adoption in markets all over the world, including in Japan.
Over the last several months, we’ve had the privilege of working closely with the ElevenLabs team in Japan, leveraging our experience and local insights to help amplify their growth in the market. We’ve also experienced a tremendous amount of inbound interest about their offerings from our corporate network of Japanese partners.
Our team experienced the power of ElevenLabs firsthand during a live product demo in Tokyo for one of our Japanese corporate partners in the advertising industry. In the session, the ElevenLabs platform accurately translated a piece of Japanese video content into multiple languages in real-time with just the click of a button.
These translations maintained the speaker’s original voice, tonality, emotion, and pacing, thereby delivering an authentic and immersive audio experience. This type of high-quality, self-service dubbing has the potential to unlock entirely new opportunities for content creators worldwide, making multilingual communication more accessible than ever before.
For those in the room that day, who had been relying on human translators to conduct the meeting, it felt magical – a moment straight out of Arthur Clarke's vision for advanced technology.
We look forward to continuing to support ElevenLabs in achieving its mission of making any content accessible in any language and any voice, both in Japan and around the world.
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