Voice AI company ElevenLabs announced today that it has raised $500 million in a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital, which was an investor in the startup’s last two rounds through a bid. Sequoia partner Andrew Reed has joined the company’s board of directors.
The startup is currently valued at $11 billion, more than three times its valuation in its last round in January 2025. Earlier this year, the Financial Times reported that the startup was planning to increase its valuation.
The company announced that a16z, an existing investor, quadrupled the investment amount, and Iconic, which led the last round, tripled the investment amount. Some previous investors such as BroadLight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition, and Smash Capital also participated in the round. New investors for the funding included Lightspeed Venture Partners and Evantic.
Capital, bonds.
ElevenLabs said it will reveal some investors who could become strategic partners at the end of February. The company has raised more than $781 million to date. It said it would use the funds for research and product development along with expansion into overseas markets such as India, Japan, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico.
Mati Staniszewski, the company’s co-founder, said ElevenLabs is working on agents other than voice and may even integrate video. In January, the company announced a partnership with LTX to produce audio-video content.
“The intersection of models and products is critical, and our team has proven time and time again how to translate research into real-world experiences. This funding will help us completely transform the way we interact with technology using just voice. We plan to expand our creative offerings by helping creators combine best-in-class audio with video and agents, allowing businesses to build agents that can speak, type, and take action,” he said in a statement.
The company showed good growth momentum, ending the year with ARR of $330 million. In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this year, Staniszewski said it took ElevenLabs five months to reach $200 million to $300 million in ARR.
Providers of voice AI models are attractive targets for investors and big tech companies. In January, rival Deepgram raised $130 million from AVP at a $1.3 billion valuation. Meanwhile, Google has hired top talent from speech model company Hume AI, including CEO Alan Cowen.
