ElevenLabs doubles valuation to $22B in tender offer

ElevenLabs announced on Wednesday that it closed a $300 million employee tender offer valuing the voice AI company at $22 billion, double the $11 billion valuation set during its Series D round in February. The transaction, led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price, makes ElevenLabs one of the most valuable AI startups outside China.trendingtopics+2

New Backers and Growing Enterprise Demand

EQT, Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ↗ 0.84%, GIC, OTPP, Sapphire Ventures, and BDT & MSD invested in ElevenLabs for the first time through the tender. Existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, ICONIQ, D.E. Shaw, and Alkeon also participated. In a tender offer, employees sell existing shares to investors; the company itself receives no new capital, though the sale establishes a fresh share price.unite+1

The company said enterprise customers now account for 55 percent of revenue, with clients including Stripe, Deutsche Telekom, and the governments of Ukraine and Greece deploying its ElevenAgents conversational platform. Agents now handle more than 15 million conversations per week, triple the volume at the start of 2026, and ElevenAgents' annual recurring revenue has more than tripled since the Series D. Sacra, a private-market research firm, estimated in September that ElevenLabs reached roughly $600 million in ARR by mid-2026.trendingtopics+2

"AI should interact with people the way we interact with each other," said Mati Staniszewski, cofounder and CEO.unite

Competition and Legal Risks

ElevenLabs faces competition from OpenAI and Google Alphabet Inc. ↗ 0.17%, both of which are building voice features into their platforms, as well as specialized providers like Cartesia and Deepgram. Legal headwinds also loom: earlier this year, seven journalists, voice actors, and podcasters in Illinois filed a class-action lawsuit alleging the company extracted biometric voiceprints from public recordings without consent, citing the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.trendingtopics

Path to IPO

Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, ElevenLabs now employs more than 800 people, with its main office in London. Bloomberg reported in July that the company had been in talks for a tender offer at this valuation. Staniszewski has said ElevenLabs aims to be ready for an initial public offering within two to three years, though any listing would depend on market conditions.tradersunion+2