Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria, Matthew McConaughey and Hwang Dong-hyuk are entering into the capital of ElevenLabs, alongside BlackRock, NVIDIA and Wellington Management, during an extension of the series D that we announced to you last February. Through this investment, these figures of the cultural industry are gaining a foothold in a technology that could redefine the way in which audiovisual content is produced, dubbed, distributed and consumed on a global scale.
The startup develops artificial intelligence models capable of generating realistic synthetic voices, cloning human voices, translating and dubbing audiovisual content, but also powering conversational agents deployed in companies.
The company’s technological core is based on proprietary text-to-speech and speech-to-speech models capable of reproducing nuances that are particularly difficult to model: breathing, rhythm, hesitations, emotions or intonation variations. The challenge is no longer just to produce a “credible” voice, but to make conversations natural enough so that they can replace certain repetitive human interactions.
This development is of course of interest to the cultural industries. Streaming platforms and studios have been seeking to reduce content localization times and costs for several years. The dubbing technologies developed by ElevenLabs now make it possible to generate multilingual versions capable of retaining some of the original vocal characteristics of the actors.
In a market where content is distributed immediately on a global scale, this capacity becomes strategic. The international success of non-English productions like Squid Game has accelerated this transformation. Platforms are now seeking to industrialize dubbing and linguistic adaptation without multiplying traditional post-production cycles.
ElevenLabs also develops tools for businesses to automate voice interactions in customer support, sales, recruitment and marketing operations. The company also explains that the recent growth in its activity comes mainly from the deployment of these conversational voice agents.
This development gradually brings ElevenLabs closer to the role of a software infrastructure publisher rather than a simple creative player in generative AI. Voice here becomes an operational interface that allows companies to automate entire conversations with their customers or users.
ElevenLabs announces that it has exceeded $500 million in annual recurring revenue in the first quarter of 2026, compared to $350 million at the end of 2025.
Alongside Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria and Hwang Dong-hyuk, who join Matthew McConaughey, already an investor in the company, the investment funds BlackRock, Wellington Management, DE Shaw & Co., Schroders, Santander and NVentures, the investment vehicle of NVIDIA, are also part of this extension of the series D, bringing the total amount raised to more than 550 million dollars, based on a valuation of 11 billion of dollars.
Founded in 2022 in London by Polish entrepreneurs Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, ElevenLabs is supported in particular by Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. With this new operation, the company has now raised more than 660 million euros since its creation and has established itself among the highest valued European artificial intelligence startups on the market in Europe.
