| By Loc Le |
After raising $80 million in a Series B funding round, the London and Brooklyn-based AI startup ElevenLabs, which specializes in developing AI tools for creating and editing synthetic voices, has officially obtained unicorn status, which can only be achieved when a startup company reaches a valuation of $1 billion or more. While the company did not provide an exact valuation, it said that it had achieved the status after the funding round, which was led by notable investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross and included Sequoia Capital, Smash Capital, SV Angel, BroadLight Capital, and Credo Ventures, boosted its’ valuation to approximately $1.1 billion. According to CEO Mateusz Staniszewski, the money was raised “to cement ElevenLabs’ position as the global leader in voice AI research and product development.”
A Rapid Rise to Unicorn Status
This massive accomplishment comes about 20 months after ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Staniszewski, an ex-Palantir deployment strategist, and Piotr Dabkowski, an ex-Google machine learning engineer. The pair, who are both from Poland, became inspired to start the company due to the poor dubbing they witnessed in American films that they watched growing up. Thinking that AI could do better, the two began designing a platform that would eliminate the linguistic barriers of content which have since evolved into ElevenLabs’ mission of making “on-demand multilingual audio support a reality across education, streaming, audiobooks, gaming, movies, and even real-time conversation.” This ambition quickly attracted the attention of the AI industry. In June 2023, just over a year after launching, the company was valued at around $99 million after raising $19 million in a Series A funding round led by the same three investors of the Series B round, Horowitz, Friedman, and Gross.
Deepfake Voices Create Controversy
Despite the substantial increases in the company’s valuation throughout the years indicating the tremendous capabilities of ElevenLabs’ AI audio tools, the rise of such technology has been the center of controversy on several occasions. When the company launched its beta, for instance, the tool was quickly used to make audio deepfakes of celebrities such as Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, and Emma Watson saying racist and other offensive material. Furthermore, just last week, ElevenLabs’ tools were used to create an audio deepfake of US President Joe Biden that told voters in New Hampshire to not vote in their state’s upcoming primary. According to ElevenLabs, which is still investigating the incident, the identified account that made the deepfake has already been banned. ElevenLabs stated the company is continually “dedicated to preventing the misuse of audio AI tools and [that it takes] any incidents of misuse extremely seriously.” In response to the growing concerns over malicious misuse, the company has repeatedly emphasized its commitment to ensuring that the tools are used safely. CEO Staniszewski has even stated that the money raised from the Series B funding round will be put towards “enhancing safety measures to ensure responsible and ethical development of AI technology” as well as product development, expanding the company’s infrastructure and team, and AI research.
New Technology Brings New Labor Concerns
In addition to issues of misuse, there have also been many concerns of job displacement in industries such as the voice acting industry which has already begun asking voice actors to sign away the rights to their voices. By doing so, clients gain the ability to legally use AI audio tools to replicate the voice actors’ voices and create a generic version that could end up replacing them without any additional compensation. To address this concern, ElevenLabs is planning to release a marketplace for voices which is currently in alpha. With this marketplace, users would be allowed to create a voice, share it, and be compensated when others use it. As described by Staniszewski, “the marketplace is designed as a step towards harmonizing AI advancements with established industry practices, while also bringing a diverse set of voices to ElevenLabs’ platform.”
Although this may seem like a step in the right direction, it is worth mentioning that the current state of the marketplace only allows contributors to receive compensation with credits that can be used towards ElevenLabs’ premium services. Unless the credits can be converted into real currency in a future update, many voice actors will likely be unsatisfied with the platform. Therefore, as the current global leader in voice AI research and product development, ElevenLabs must make ethical and rational advancements in their AI audio technology as other startups and big companies continue to enter the rapidly growing market.
Photo Credit: ElevenLabs