DiscoverEquityElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore
ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore

ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore

Update: 2025-12-10
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ElevenLabs has made a name for itself building realistic AI voices.  


 


What started as two Polish engineers annoyed by terrible movie dubbing has grown into a profitable company now valued at $6.6 billion, doubling its valuation from just nine months ago. The company recently announced a $100 million tender offer led by Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from a16z and others, as its tech powers everything from Fortnite characters to customer service bots and goes toe-to-toe with OpenAI to become the default voice of AI. 


 


Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation with CEO Mati Staniszewski from this year's Disrupt, where he made a surprising admission: he thinks voice models will be commoditized in just a couple of years. So what's ElevenLabs' plan when everyone else catches up? 


 


Listen to the full episode to hear about:  




  • Why ElevenLabs is pivoting from just voice models to building a conversational AI agent platform 






  • How the company is tackling deepfakes with watermarking, AI detection, and device authentication 






  • Why Staniszewski believes there will soon be more AI-generated content than human content 






  • ElevenLabs' push into music generation and partnerships to fuse audio with video models 




Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 

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ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore

ElevenLabs just hit $6.6B, but its CEO says the real money isn't in voice anymore

TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Max Zeff, Theresa Loconsolo