Mati Staniszewski

Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, joins Sequoia partner Andrew Reed at AI Ascent 2026 to talk about how a four-year-old company built a frontier audio AI business with just over 400 people and over $400M in revenue. He explains why audio was overlooked in 2022 when the rest of AI was chasing text and images, why ElevenLabs chose to monetize from day one rather than raise indefinitely, and why he believes voice will be the primary interface for agents, robots, and the next generation of computing. Also: why emotional intelligence is the next frontier in voice, and what happens when one voice agent realizes it's talking to another.

Mati Staniszewski

Co-Founder and CEO

ElevenLabs

Imagine learning chess from a grand master, or negotiating tactics from an expert FBI hostage negotiator. ElevenLabs’ voice AI technology is making that unlock possible. Sarah Guo sits down with Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of ElevenLabs, to explore how the three-year old company is transforming how humans interact with technology through voice. Mati talks about the technical challenges of building foundational audio models, the strategic thinking between conducting research and deploying products in tandem, and why voice is the ultimate interface for everything from computers to robots to immersive media. They also discuss how the coming revolution of AI personal tutors will shift agentic AI from reactive to proactive support, break down language barriers globally, and even provide the framework for agentic government services. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @elevenlabsio |@matiii Chapters: 00:00 – Mati Staniszewski Introduction 00:46 – 11 Labs: Growth and Scale 02:46 – Voice Technology and Applications 06:52 – Research and Product Development 12:36 – Voice Quality and Customer Preferences 17:54 – Agent Platform and Use Cases 23:21 – Choosing the Right Technology Partner 26:43 – The Role of Foundation Models 29:58 – Open Source Models and Future Trends 32:37 – Research and Development Focus 36:53 – Future of AI Companions and Education 41:37 – Conclusion

Mati Staniszewski

Co-Founder and CEO

ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs has made a name for itself building realistic AI voices.     What started as two Polish engineers annoyed by terrible movie dubbing has grown into a profitable company now valued at $6.6 billion, doubling its valuation from just nine months ago. The company recently announced a $100 million tender offer led by Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from a16z and others, as its tech powers everything from Fortnite characters to customer service bots and goes toe-to-toe with OpenAI to become the default voice of AI.    Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation with CEO Mati Staniszewski from this year's Disrupt, where he made a surprising admission: he thinks voice models will be commoditized in just a couple of years. So what's ElevenLabs' plan when everyone else catches up?    Listen to the full episode to hear about:   Why ElevenLabs is pivoting from just voice models to building a conversational AI agent platform  How the company is tackling deepfakes with watermarking, AI detection, and device authentication  Why Staniszewski believes there will soon be more AI-generated content than human content  ElevenLabs' push into music generation and partnerships to fuse audio with video models  Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mati Staniszewski

Co-Founder and CEO

ElevenLabs

ElevenLabs CEO and co‑founder Mati Staniszewski joins Jennifer Li to explain how the team ships research‑grade AI at lightning speed—from text‑to‑speech and fully licensed AI music to real‑time voice agents—and why voice is the next interface for human‑computer interaction. He shares the small, autonomous team model, global hiring approach, and how the Voice Marketplace has paid creators over $10M while evolving into an enterprise platform.   Resources: Follow Mati on X: https://x.com/matistanis Follow Jennifer on X: https://x.com/JenniferHli   Stay Updated:  If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.   Stay Updated: Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mati Staniszewski

Co-Founder and CEO

ElevenLabs

Before AI became a buzzword, a few true believers were already building. Since early 2022, Mati Staniszewski and his team at ElevenLabs have been among them, working to create voices that “actually represent emotions.” He shares with Joubin Mirzadegan how voice AI is transforming diverse fields, from delivering personalized healthcare for different age groups to amplifying creativity in filmmaking. Guest: Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs Connect with Mati Staniszewski X LinkedIn ​ Connect with Joubin X LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com ​ ​Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Mati Staniszewski

Co-Founder and CEO

ElevenLabs

Mati Staniszewski is the Co-Founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, the world's leading AI voice platform. Since launching in 2022, ElevenLabs has raised over $350M, most recently at a $3.3BN valuation, making it one of Europe's fastest AI unicorns. The company counts Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Sequoia Capital among its backers. Today, Mati announces that the company has hit a staggering $200M ARR. ElevenLabs took 20 months to hit $100M ARR. 10 months to hit $200M ARR. Can they do $300M in 5 months… AGENDA: [00:00] $100M in 20 Months?! ElevenLabs Untold Growth Story [12:20] Are AI Models Already Plateauing—or Just Getting Started? [14:00] Why OpenAI Can't Beat ElevenLabs [17:30] The Talent Wars: How Do You Retain World-Class AI Researchers? [23:10] PR vs Product: Why Most Startups Botch Their Launch [36:00] Are U.S. VCs Playing a Different Game Than Europe? [44:00] The Real Cost of AI: Why ElevenLabs Built Its Own Data Centers [59:00] Voice Agents = Multi-Billion Dollar Business of the Future? [01:05:00] Buy OpenAI or Anthropic? Which Foundation Model Wins? [01:09:30] Europe: Strengths, Weaknesses and What Needs to be Done

Mati Staniszewski

Co-Founder and CEO

ElevenLabs

Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, explains how staying laser-focused on audio innovation has allowed his company to thrive despite the push into multimodality from foundation models. From a high school friendship in Poland to building one of the fastest-growing AI companies, Mati shares how ElevenLabs transformed text-to-speech with contextual understanding and emotional delivery. He discusses the company's viral moments (from Harry Potter by Balenciaga to powering Darth Vader in Fortnite), and explains how ElevenLabs is creating the infrastructure for voice agents and real-time translation that could eliminate language barriers worldwide. Hosted by: Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital Mentioned in this episode: Attention Is All You Need: The original Transformers paper Tortoise-tts: Open source text to speech model that was a starting point for ElevenLabs (which now maintains a v2) Harry Potter by Balenciaga: ElevenLabs’ first big viral moment from 2023 The first AI that can laugh: 2022 blog post backing up ElevenLab’s claim of laughter (it got better in v3) Darth Vader's voice in Fortnite: ElevenLabs used actual voice clips provided by James Earl Jones before he died Lex Fridman interviews Prime Minister Modi: ElevenLabs enabled Fridman to speak in Hindi and Modi to speak in English. Time Person of the Year 2024: ElevenLabs-powered experiment with “conversational journalism” Iconic Voices: Richard Feynman, Deepak Chopra, Maya Angelou and more available in ElevenLabs reader app SIP trunking: a method of delivering voice, video, and other unified communications over the internet using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Genesys: Leading enterprise CX platform for agentic AI Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Comedy/science-fiction series by Douglas Adams that contains the concept of the Babel Fish instantaneous translator, cited by Mati FYI: communication and productivity app for creatives that Mati uses, founded by will.i.am Lovable: prototyping app that Mati loves

Mati Staniszewski

Co-Founder and CEO

ElevenLabs