ElevenLabs Launches Its Beta: A Voice AI Startup Kicks Off with $2M Pre-Seed
ElevenLabs, founded in 2022 by Poland-born Piotr DÄ…bkowski and Mati Staniszewski, released the beta version of its AI voice synthesis platform. The company simultaneously announced a $2 million pre-seed round led by Credo Ventures, marking the start of its full-scale business push.
Details
- What it offers: A platform that converts written text into speech with natural, human-like inflection and intonation, aimed at content creators and publishers looking to turn long-form content into audio
- Technical highlights: The company touted the ability to adjust speaking style based on context, contrasting it with conventional text-to-speech (TTS), which tends to sound monotonous
- Funding: A $2 million pre-seed round led by Credo Ventures, with participation from Concept Ventures
- Future plans: The company also revealed plans to release an “AI dubbing tool” within 2023 that could translate speech into another language while preserving the speaker’s original voice characteristics
- Founding story: Founded in 2022 by former Google machine learning engineer Piotr DÄ…bkowski and former Palantir business staffer Mati Staniszewski, the company spent 2022 in stealth mode researching and developing its voice AI models
What happened next
Just six months after the beta launch, registered users surpassed 1 million, leading to a Series A round in June 2023 that fueled full-scale business expansion. This announcement — laying the groundwork for multilingual support and dubbing features — became the starting point of ElevenLabs’ rapid growth in the voice AI market.