ElevenLabs hits $11B valuation betting your voice is the ultimate interface
ElevenLabs hits an $11B valuation with $330M in revenue. Here is why Wall Street is betting your voice will replace your keyboard.
ElevenLabs co-founders Mati Staniszewski
Key Highlights
- •The company crossed $330 million in ARR, jumping $100M in just five months.
- •Major deals with Revolut and Deutsche Telekom validate voice AI as critical infrastructure.
- •A fresh $500M raise values the platform at $11 billion, tripling its worth in one year.
The QWERTY keyboard had a good run, but if Mati Staniszewski has his way, its days as your primary digital tether are numbered. ElevenLabs just closed 2025 with over $330 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a figure that signals a massive shift in how the enterprise world views audio. This isn't just about celebrity voice clones anymore; it is a high-stakes infrastructure play to replace the screen with the spoken word.
Staniszewski, the co-founder of the London and New York-based unicorn, has effectively cornered the market on "audio intelligence." With a fresh $500 million Series D injection led by Sequoia Capital, the company has tripled its valuation in just twelve months to a staggering $11 billion. The thesis driving this capital flight is simple but aggressive: while OpenAI and Google fight for the "brain" of AI, ElevenLabs is locking down the "mouth."
The Enterprise Pivot
The real story here isn't the tech; it's the customer list. While consumer apps grab headlines, ElevenLabs has quietly integrated into the backends of global giants like Deutsche Telekom, Square, and Revolut. These aren't experimental pilots. As detailed in their Series D announcement, the company’s enterprise adoption grew exponentially in 2025, with their technology now handling millions of interactions for major brands.
This creates a defensive moat that is difficult for competitors to cross. By embedding its API into critical banking and government workflows, including a partnership with the Ukrainian Government ElevenLabs is moving from a "nice-to-have" creative tool to mission-critical infrastructure. The company’s growth metrics reflect this stickiness: ARR surged from $200 million to $300 million in just five months leading up to the end of 2025.
The "Operating System" for Audio
Staniszewski’s vision extends beyond mere text-to-speech. The new capital is earmarked for "ElevenAgents," a platform designed to let businesses build autonomous voice workers. This puts them on a collision course with OpenAI’s own voice initiatives, but ElevenLabs has a specialized advantage: latency and emotion.
In a recent discussion on the future of interfaces, Staniszewski was clear about the endgame. "Hopefully all our phones will go back in our pockets, and we can immerse ourselves in the real world around us, with voice as the mechanism that controls technology," he told TechCrunch.
The market is pricing ElevenLabs not as a feature, but as a platform. Investors are betting that as AI agents become ubiquitous, they will need a distinct, controllable voice to represent brands. If every company in the Fortune 500 needs a proprietary "voice" to talk to customers, Staniszewski is positioning his company to be the sole supplier of that identity.
The Risk Profile
The valuation is rich, even for AI. At roughly 33x forward revenue, the stock is priced for perfection. The risks are tangible: "deepfake" regulation is looming in the EU and US, and big tech incumbents are waking up to the audio layer. However, with $781 million in total funding and a dominant market share, ElevenLabs has the war chest to fight both regulators and rivals.
The interface war is over. Voice won. Now the industry is just paying the bill.
