London and New York-based ElevenLabs closed a $500 million Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital, pushing its valuation to $11 billion. The company enters 2026 with a $330 million ARR, signaling a shift from a creator tool to a mission-critical enterprise interface.
Led by CEO Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs is utilizing the capital to expand ElevenAgents, its platform for autonomous conversational AI. By moving toward “Audio General Intelligence,” the firm enables entities like Deutsche Telekom and the Ukrainian Government to deploy interactive voice agents at scale. This focus on building a foundational, reusable intelligence layer parallels the infrastructure strategy seen in Qontext’s enterprise context stack.
Market Signal
- The Interface Alpha: ElevenLabs has effectively won the “Audio OS” war. By moving 85% of its revenue to enterprise contracts, it has built a non-displaceable layer for global brands that requires consistent, multilingual voice identity across 70+ languages.
- Strategic Expansion: The platform is evolving from passive “Text-to-Speech” to active “ElevenAgents” that can talk, type, and take action. This move toward agency puts ElevenLabs in direct competition with traditional call-center software and CRM service layers.
- The Deepfake Friction: A primary execution hurdle remains “Trust Infrastructure”; as synthesized voices become indistinguishable from humans, ElevenLabs must pioneer industry-wide watermarking and voice-ID security to prevent high-stakes fraud in government and financial sectors.
Key Details
- Funding: $500M ($781M total)
- Valuation: $11B
- Lead Investor: Sequoia Capital
- CEO: Mati Staniszewski
- Use Case: Audio general intelligence and autonomous enterprise voice agents
