ElevenLabs closed a $500 million Series D at an $11 billion valuation, led by Sequoia with significant follow-ons from a16z and ICONIQ.

ElevenLabs uses AI to convert text to speech with highly natural voice replication, enabling use cases like books and articles narrated by celebrity or historic voices, and it has signed deals with Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey.

Executives say the new capital will expand the AI voice and conversational platform and broaden partnerships across enterprise and entertainment sectors, with the goal of building a broader conversational AI platform for business and consumer use.

The piece discusses broader market sentiment around AI ETFs, on-chain AI DeFi activity, and the interaction between traditional markets and crypto amid AI funding.

New investors in the round include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic Capital, and BOND, joining continued participation from BroadLight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition, and Smash Capital.

Founded by Google and Palantir alumni, the company develops AI tech for synthetic voice generation with emotion and intonation.

As of now, ElevenLabs employs about 400 people and received roughly a quarter-million job applications in the past year.

ElevenLabs, founded in 2022 in London, specializes in generative AI voice and speech-synthesis for conversational agents, customer service automation, and content creation, serving publishers and creators.

A new conversational model with improved emotional understanding and turn-taking is in alpha testing to enhance ElevenAgents’ enterprise capabilities.

Co-founder Mati Staniszewski emphasizes translating research into real-world experiences and expanding into creative offerings that integrate audio with video and agents for talk, type, and action, as the company eyes an IPO and broader growth.

Staniszewski notes a broader push beyond voice to global AI applications.

Sequoia partner Andrew Reed will join ElevenLabs’ board as part of the deal.