ElevenLabs, a deeptech that is one of the global references when it comes to AI applied to voice, received a significant contribution to continue its development. It announced a $500 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital, which puts it at a valuation of $11 billion.
The round included new big names, such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic Capital and Bond. Additionally, previous investors such as BroadLight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition and Smash Capital also joined. Andreessen Horowitz quadrupled its position, while Iconiq, which led the Series C, tripled the amount invested.
The movement draws attention not only because of the size of the check, but because of the speed with which ElevenLabs has accumulated checks. Founded in 2022 by former executives from Google and Palantir, the company has already raised more than US$780 million, operating on a front that has become a strategic priority for both investors and big techs: AI models capable of speaking, listening, understanding context and acting.
On ElevenLabs’ side, the capital injection will help advance its business strategy. As the company highlighted to TechCrunch, deeptech wants to “expand its borders” and not be seen as just a supplier of synthetic voices. Last year, founder and CEO Matt Stanizewski publicly signaled his intention to move into multimodal experiences, combining voice, text, video and automated actions.
To expand its revenue sources, the startup is investing heavily in its conversational agent platform for the B2B market, with applications in sales, service, marketing and internal communication.
Currently, the company’s revenue is still divided equally between end users and enterprise customers, but the expectation is that the weight of B2B will increase consistently in the coming years.
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ElevenLabs closed 2025 with annual recurring revenue of US$330 million and took just a few months to jump from US$200 million to that level. The company currently has approximately 400 employees and received almost 250,000 applications last year.
ElevenLabs’ expansion is also geographic. A few weeks ago, it announced a $33 million investment in research and development in New York, where it opened a new office. It also maintains operations in London and Warsaw and plans to operate in markets such as Brazil, Mexico, India, Japan and Singapore.
The deeptech D series arrives at a time when the voice AI market is heating up, with other competitors also raising high figures. One example is Deepgram, a San Francisco startup that last month reached unicorn status after raising US$130 million.
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Competition also comes from big tech: companies like Google move to absorb talent and technologies from the sector. In turn, Meta purchased WaveForms last year, also investing in voice models to reinforce its AI front.
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