AI voice unicorn ElevenLabs has raised $500m in Series D funding at an $11bn valuation, led by Sequoia Capital.
The blockbuster raise comes just a year after the startup raised $180m at a $3.3bn valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq — which both participated in the Series D round.
Existing investors Broadlight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition and Smash Capital also invested in the latest raise, while Lightspeed, Evantic Capital and Bond joined as new investors.
The funding will be used to build out its enterprise offering, as the company scales its conversational agents platform which can be used by businesses for sales, marketing, customer service and internal comms.
In a recent interview with Sifted, cofounder Mati Staniszewski told Sifted that the voice unicorn’s revenue was split roughly 50-50 between enterprise and consumer users in December 2025, but said this will shift to 60-40 by December 2026 and 70-30 by the end of the following year.
Founded in 2022 by Google and Palantir alumni, ElevenLabs is building AI tech for synthetic voice generation. Its tool converts between speech and text, featuring emotion and intonation, allowing clients like publishers and content creators to turn written material into audio.
At the beginning of 2026, ElevenLabs majorly expanded its operations in New York, opening an office and investing $33m in research and development there. It also has offices in Warsaw and London.
The company currently has 400 employees, and fielded nearly a quarter of a million job applications last year.
“There’s still so much to build,” Stansizewski wrote on LinkedIn. “We stay hungry, knowing how early this space still is as we build toward IPO and beyond.”
