New York-based generative AI start-up, ElevenLabs, has announced that it has raised a $19m Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, GitHub founder Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross, a former machine learning director at Apple.
The company’s AI platform, which launched in beta in January 2023, specialises in text-to-speech and voice cloning software, and has already attracted over 1 million registered users across the creative, entertainment and publishing industries.
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ElevenLabs said: “The investment fuels our ambition to establish the leading voice AI research hub and continue building great products for audio.”
“With a passionate team, a growing community, and these amazing partners, we are now a step closer to realising our long-term goal of making all content universally accessible in any language and in any voice.”
The announcement came alongside the release of new voice AI products, including “Projects”, a new workflow for creating an entire audiobook in a matter of minutes, and an AI speech detection model.
ElevenLabs co-founder, Mati Staniszewski, told Sifted that the money will be used to hire machine learning specialists who can work to improve the company’s audio technology, as well as software engineers and product designers, who can expand the company’s enterprise offering across publishing, gaming and entertainment.
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By GlobalDataAI funding frenzy
Eleven Labs’ capital raising is the latest in a flurry of recent AI start-up deal announcements. In May 2023, New Enterprise Associates, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, made a “proactive offer” to Sana Labs, an AI-powered learning platform.
And last week (June 12), AI-powered video generation company Synthesia raised $90m in series C funding from investors led by venture capital firm Accel and backed by US chipmaker NVIDIA.
A four-week-old French AI start-up, Mistral AI, also raised $113m in Europe’s largest-ever seed round last week, with major investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, former Google chief Eric Schmidt, and French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel.
