How A Tiny Polish Startup Became The Multi-Billion-Dollar Voice Of AI

Forbes

ElevenLabs’ computer voices are so convincing they could fool your mother. That’s both a blessing—its 30 Under 30 alumni founders are now both billionaires—and a curse for the four-year-old company.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2025/12/01/how-a-tiny-polish-startup-became-the-multi-billion-dollar-voice-of-ai/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Today on Forbes, How a Tiny Polish Startup Became the Multi-Billion Dollar Voice of AI

00:06Dubbed films in Poland are horrible.

00:11A lone lector delivers all the dialogue in an ennerved Slavic monotone.

00:16There is no cast, no variation between speakers.

00:20Young audiences hate it.

00:22Mateusz, or Mati, Stanisiewski, the co-founder of AI speech outfit Eleven Labs, says, quote,

00:29Ask any Polish person and they will tell you it's terrible.

00:32I guess it was a communist thing that stuck as a cheap way to produce content.

00:37While working at Palantir, Stanisiewski teamed up with high school friend and Google engineer

00:43Piotr Dabkowski to experiment with artificial intelligence.

00:48The pair realized that one project, a particularly promising AI public speaking coach, could solve

00:53the uniquely Polish horror of Leonardo DiCaprio or Scarlett Johansson being drowned out by

00:59a lector star like Maciej Gudowski.

01:02The pair pulled their savings and by May 2022 had quit their jobs to work full-time on Eleven Labs.

01:10Out of the gate, their new AI text-to-speech generator was leagues better than the robotic

01:15voices of Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.

01:17Eleven Labs' AI voices were capable of happiness, excitement, and even laughter.

01:25In January 2023, Eleven Labs launched its first model.

01:30It could take any piece of text and use AI to read it aloud in any voice, including a

01:35clone of your own, or worryingly, someone else's.

01:38There was immediate demand.

01:40Authors could instantly spawn audiobooks with the software.

01:43Pro rates now start from $99 a month for higher quality and more time.

01:49YouTube creators used Eleven Labs to translate their videos into other languages.

01:54Its models can now speak in 29.

01:57The Warsaw and London-based startup landed deals with language learning and meditation apps.

02:03Then media companies like HarperCollins and Germany's Bertelsmann jumped in.

02:07Investor Jennifer Lee of Andreessen Horowitz, which co-led a $19 million round in May 2023,

02:14says, quote,

02:15A year later, the co-founders were honored as part of Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe.

02:26Others, though, found more unnerving uses.

02:29AI soundalikes of public figures such as President Trump crassly narrating video game duels,

02:34actress Emma Watson reading Mein Kampf, and podcaster Joe Rogan touting scams quickly went viral.

02:42Worse, fraudsters began using AI cloning tools to impersonate loved ones' voices and steal millions in sophisticated deepfake swindles.

02:51None of it stopped venture capitalists from pouring in money.

02:55Eleven Labs has raised more than $300 million in all,

02:58soaring to a $6.6 billion valuation in October to become one of Europe's most valuable startups.

03:06Staniszewski, who is 30 years old and who acts as CEO because the firm has no traditional titles,

03:11and research head Debkowski, also 30 years old, are now both billionaires,

03:16worth just over $1 billion each, per Forbes estimates.

03:20Around half of Eleven Labs' $193 million in trailing 12-month revenue comes from corporates like

03:27Cisco, Twilio, and Swiss recruitment agency ADECO, which uses its tech to field customer service calls

03:34or interview job seekers.

03:36Epic Games uses it to voice characters in Fortnite, including a chat with Darth Vader,

03:41with the consent of James Earl Jones' estate.

03:44The other half of its revenue comes from the YouTubers, podcasters, and authors who were early adopters.

03:51Unlike most AI firms, Eleven Labs is profitable.

03:55Forbes estimates it netted $116 million in the last 12 months, a 60% margin.

04:02It's now competing against giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI to become the de facto voice of AI.

04:10It's not a new space.

04:11Tech companies started spinning up products to listen to, transcribe, and generate speech around a decade ago.

04:18While it's somewhat of a sideline for Microsoft, Satya Nadella was willing to shell out $20 billion

04:23to buy NASDAQ-listed voice transcription service Nuance in March 2022.

04:29OpenAI launched its own voice tool, which can feed human conversations into ChatGPT, in October 2024.

04:35But Eleven Labs' 300-person team isn't playing catch-up.

04:41Its models are so good that it's able to get away with charging up to three times as much as these American rivals.

04:47Its library of 10,000 uncannily human-sounding voices is the largest by far,

04:53and now includes A-listers Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey.

04:57Staniszewski says, quote,

04:58We are one of the very few companies that are ahead of OpenAI,

05:02not only on speech, but speech-to-text and music.

05:06That's hard.

05:08For full coverage, check out Ian Martin's piece on Forbes.com.

05:13This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.

05:16Thanks for tuning in.

05:28Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:34This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:36This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:38This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:40This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:42This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:44This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:46This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:48This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:50This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:52This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

05:54This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.com.

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