ElevenLabs raises £365m to automate customer support with conversational voice agents
This article covers ElevenLabs, an AI startup, raising £365.3m in a series D funding round that values the startup at about £8bn. The development aims to support enterprises, creators and developers deploying production-grade voice and conversational AI for customer support, localisation and interactive products.
ElevenLabs, an AI startup, has raised £365.3m in a series D funding round that values the company at about £8bn. The round comes as ElevenLabs reports more than £241.1m in ARR and signals growing commercial demand for production-grade voice and conversational AI in enterprise settings.
Why it matters
This is one of the largest European AI rounds in recent memory and underscores how quickly audio-focused AI has moved from research demos to enterprise deployments. ElevenLabs’ valuation — more than three times its level a year ago — highlights investor appetite for companies that can marry foundational models with scalable infrastructure for real-world use.
The company’s reported ARR and customer roster suggest this is not purely hype: enterprises are deploying ElevenLabs’ technology for customer support, conversational commerce, citizen engagement and training. Those are revenue-bearing use cases that matter to large organisations looking to reduce call centre costs and automate interactions at scale.
Inside the product
ElevenLabs started with human-like text-to-speech and has broadened into a stack that covers speech-to-text, dubbing, sound effects, music and conversational models. Its commercial products are positioned for different user groups:
- ElevenAgents: an enterprise platform for voice and chat agents that includes integrations, testing and monitoring for large-scale customer operations. Customers named by the company include Deutsche Telekom, Square, the Ukrainian Government and Revolut, which use the product for support, inbound sales, citizen services and internal training.
- ElevenCreative: a toolset for creators and brands to generate, edit and localise high-fidelity audio across more than 70 languages. Clients cited include Duolingo, NVIDIA and TIME — examples that show use for localisation and content production.
- ElevenAPI: low-latency voice infrastructure for developers building interactive products. The company says Meta, Epic Games, Salesforce, MasterClass and Harvey use the API to power experiences reaching large audiences.
The firm also announced upgrades to its voice agents: faster response times, improved expressiveness and turn-taking behaviour powered by a new Eleven v3 Conversational model. Research efforts will continue in areas such as emotional conversational models, dubbing and what ElevenLabs calls audio general intelligence.
Who are the investors?
The series D was led by Sequoia Capital, with Andrew Reed joining ElevenLabs’ board. Andreessen Horowitz increased its stake substantially and ICONIQ also made a larger follow-on commitment, described by the company as “super pro-rata participation.” New investors named in the round include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic Capital and BOND. Existing backers continuing their support include BroadLight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition and Smash Capital. The company says additional participants will be disclosed later in February.
In the announcement, Andrew Reed, Partner at Sequoia, said:
Mati and Piotr are exceptional founders and leaders. They have built ElevenLabs into one of the most successful and most impactful companies in the global AI ecosystem. From world-leading research to mind-bending creative tools to enterprise voice agents at scale, ElevenLabs is changing how people communicate and interface with technology, with organizations and institutions, and with each other. It's an honor to join their board.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
- Explore our list of AI venture capital firms in the UK
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Piotr Dabkowski, Co-Founder at ElevenLabs, said:
We started by building a voice that could sound human - and we did. Today we are building foundational models across the full audio stack - text to speech, transcription, music, dubbing and conversational models with a world-leading research team. And we take the models even further by optimizing them for the best product experiences that we believe will redefine the benchmarks.
In the announcement, Mati Staniszewski, Co-Founder at ElevenLabs, said:
The intersection of models and products is critical - and our team has proven, time and again, how to translate research into real-world experiences. This funding helps us go beyond voice alone to transform how we interact with technology altogether. We plan to expand our Creative offering - helping creators combine our best-in-class audio with video and Agents - enabling businesses to build agents that can talk, type, and take action. When we started ElevenLabs, we couldn’t have imagined the scale and impact we’ve reached today, with an incredible team doing the best work of their lives. Yet we stay hungry, knowing how early this space still is, as we build toward IPO and beyond.
The founders frame the raise as fuel for both product development and geographic expansion; ElevenLabs lists local go-to-market teams in more than a dozen cities including London, New York, San Francisco, Warsaw, Dublin, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Bengaluru, Sydney, São Paulo, Berlin, Paris and Mexico City.
The bigger picture
Large late-stage AI rounds have become a feature of the funding landscape as investors chase companies that can convert models into repeatable revenue. ElevenLabs’ focus on audio and conversational interfaces differentiates it from more generalist large-model players, but it also places the company in a competitive field that includes cloud providers and specialist voice AI firms.
The valuation and ARR figures will intensify scrutiny on unit economics and margins as customers scale production deployments. For enterprises, the attraction is clear: lower friction and more natural customer interactions, but those gains must be balanced against safety, compliance and localisation challenges when deploying voice AI at scale.
This raise is another signal that UK-founded AI companies can attract top-tier global capital while building teams and go-to-market operations across Europe and beyond. As European startups continue to commercialise research-grade AI, the region’s ecosystem will be watched for how it supports long-term growth, responsible deployment and routes to liquidity.
They've invested in ElevenLabs
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| Investor | Sector | Stage | Activity | Team | Connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Sequoia Capital | 14 investments investments | 19 contacts contacts | |||
 Lightspeed Venture Partners | 12 investments investments | 28 contacts contacts | |||
 Evantic Capital | 1 investment investment | more info | |||
 NFDG | 2 investments investments | more info | |||
 Valor Capital | 1 investment investment | more info |
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