British voice-AI startup ElevenLabs has more than doubled its valuation to $22 billion after completing a $300 million employee tender offer, cementing its place among the world's most valuable private AI companies as demand for AI voice agents surges.
The company announced the transaction on Wednesday, saying the share sale was led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price, with participation from existing backers including Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed, and new investors such as EQT, Goldman Sachs, and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC investing for the first time.
The deal marks a remarkable seven-month leap. ElevenLabs was valued at $11 billion after raising $500 million in a Series D round in February.
At $22 billion, it now sits roughly on par with France's Mistral, which secured a $24 billion valuation earlier this month in what it described as the largest equity round by a private European technology firm.
Voice agents doing the talking
Unlike a conventional fundraising round, the tender offer lets employees and existing shareholders sell their stock to investors, providing liquidity without necessarily raising new capital for the company. That investors were willing to pay double February's price for existing shares signals strong confidence in the business.
The engine behind that confidence is voice. ElevenLabs said its AI agents now handle more than 15 million conversations each week, three times the level in February, resolving tasks that range from processing refunds and renewing insurance policies to booking healthcare appointments.
"We're already seeing rapid adoption of expressive voice agents by enterprises and governments, who are deploying them in service of consumers and citizens," co-founder and chief executive Mati Staniszewski said.
Enterprise customers now account for more than half of revenue at 55 percent, a sign the company has moved well beyond its early creator-tool roots.
London roots, global scale
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski, a former Palantir employee, and Piotr Dabkowski, a machine learning engineer from Google, the London-based startup is best known for voice generation technology that turns text into human-like speech.
Its models can speak, listen, and translate in more than 90 languages used by over 5.5 billion people, according to the company.
The valuation jump also reflects where investors see AI growth heading next. Some of the largest recent AI investments have flowed to developers of AI agents, as businesses adopt the technology to automate customer service and routine back-office work.
Major technology companies are pushing into the same space: Meta recently expanded its personal AI agent Muse to small businesses.
With backers including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and actor Matthew McConaughey already on its cap table, ElevenLabs has become a leading example of European AI talent competing at the highest level of the global startup market.
