ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs is an American software company developing natural-sounding speech synthesis and text-to-speech software, using artificial intelligence and deep learning. History ElevenLabs was co-founded in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski, an ex-Google machine learning engineer and Mati Staniszewski, an ex-Palantir deployment strategist. Both were raised in Poland, and their inspiration for founding ElevenLabs reportedly came from watching inadequately dubbed American films. Dabkowski and Staniszewski initially considered different funding options, including the possibility of collaborating with a startup accelerator. In January 2023 they revealed having secured a $2 million pre-seed round. The startup's specialization in AI voice intelligence, a still-emerging field in Europe, played a significant role in attracting investors. The pre-seed funding was primarily led by Credo Ventures. In January 2023, ElevenLabs publicly released its beta platform. In June 2023, ElevenLabs raised a $19 million Series A funding round at a valuation of about $100 million, despite the company having no office and only 15 employees. The funding round was co-led by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, ex-GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, and entrepreneur Daniel Gross. It also saw participation from prominent such as SV Angel, Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram), Brendan Iribe (co-founder of Oculus), Mustafa Suleyman (co-founder of Deepmind), and Tim O'Reilly (founder of O'Reilly Media). It was also announced that Andreessen Horowitz would be joining ElevenLabs' board. Products ElevenLabs is primarily known for its browser-based, AI-assisted text-to-speech software, Speech Synthesis, which can produce lifelike speech by synthesizing vocal emotion and intonation. The company states its software is built to adjust the intonation and pacing of delivery based on the context of language input used. It uses advanced algorithms to analyze the contextual aspects of text, aiming to detect emotions like anger, sadness, happiness, or alarm, which enables the system to understand the user's sentiment, resulting in a achieve a more realistic and human-like inflection. The startup is in the process of patenting this technology. Through its beta site, users can submit text and generate audio files from a selection of default voices. Paying users are given the ability to upload custom voice samples to create new vocal styles using the company’s voice cloning tool. Voice Library is the company’s feature for sharing unique voice profiles created using their Voice Design technology. These pre-designed voice profiles allow users to select a voice that best suits their needs, rather than creating one from scratch. Another tool called VoiceLab allows users to clone voices from just a few short snippets of audio and can create entirely new synthetic voices. On 20 June 2023, ElevenLabs released an AI recognition tool called the AI Speech Classifier, which it claims is the first of its kind. The tool is accessible through an API and designed to determine if an uploaded audio sample originates from ElevenLabs' proprietary AI technology. The company has expressed its intention to collaborate with other AI developers in creating a universal detection system that could be adopted industry-wide. In July 2023, the company announced "Projects", a tool for creating long-form spoken content