ElevenLabs Founders: The Story Behind One of the Most Important AI Voice Companies
Artificial intelligence has changed how we write, design, code, create videos, and communicate. But one of the most emotional
Artificial intelligence has changed how we write, design, code, create videos, and communicate. But one of the most emotional and human parts of AI is voice. A realistic voice can tell a story, teach a lesson, narrate a video, help someone communicate again, or translate content into another language.
One of the companies leading this transformation is ElevenLabs, founded by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski. Their story is especially interesting because ElevenLabs did not start as a huge tech corporation. It started with two friends from Poland who saw a problem in the way audio and dubbing worked — and believed AI could make it better.
Who Founded ElevenLabs?
ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski. Staniszewski is the company’s CEO, while Dąbkowski is the CTO. Both founders grew up in Poland and later built their careers in the UK and global technology industry.
Their backgrounds were a strong match for building an AI company. Mati Staniszewski studied mathematics in London and worked at Palantir, where he gained experience deploying technology products at scale. Piotr Dąbkowski studied at Oxford and worked as a machine learning engineer at Google, giving him deep technical experience in artificial intelligence.
A Friendship That Started Before the Company
One of the most interesting parts of the ElevenLabs story is that Mati and Piotr were not just business partners. They were longtime friends. Staniszewski has said that he and Piotr met in high school and had been best friends since then.
That long friendship likely helped them build trust early. Startups are difficult, especially in fast-moving fields like artificial intelligence. Founders need to make quick decisions, handle pressure, raise money, build products, hire teams, and adapt to competition. Having a strong personal foundation can be a major advantage.
The Problem That Inspired ElevenLabs
The inspiration behind ElevenLabs came from a very relatable experience: bad dubbing.
Mati and Piotr grew up watching foreign films and content that were often poorly dubbed. The voices did not always match the emotion, tone, or personality of the original actors. Instead of making the content feel more accessible, bad dubbing could make it feel artificial and disconnected.
That experience helped shape the mission of ElevenLabs: to make audio content available in any language and voice, while keeping speech natural, emotional, and human. In written evidence submitted to the UK Parliament, Staniszewski described ElevenLabs as an AI audio research company focused on making content accessible in any language and voice.
From Text-to-Speech to a Full Voice AI Platform
ElevenLabs first became widely known for its realistic text-to-speech technology. Users could type text, choose a voice, and generate audio that sounded far more natural than older robotic voice tools.
But the company quickly expanded beyond simple voice generation. Today, ElevenLabs offers tools for voice generation, voice cloning, dubbing, sound effects, developer APIs, and AI voice agents. Reuters has described ElevenLabs as a London-based company specializing in tools that convert text into realistic speech.
This growth shows how the founders understood that voice AI is not only useful for creators. It can also serve businesses, publishers, game studios, educators, customer support teams, and accessibility projects.
Rapid Growth and Major Funding
ElevenLabs grew extremely quickly. In January 2025, the company raised $180 million in Series C funding at a $3.3 billion valuation. That round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ Growth.
In February 2026, ElevenLabs raised $500 million in Series D funding at an $11 billion valuation, led by Sequoia Capital. According to Reuters, this was a major jump from its previous $3.3 billion valuation in January 2025.
This kind of growth shows how strongly investors believe in the future of voice AI. It also shows that Mati and Piotr built more than a clever AI demo. They built a company with serious business demand.
Why the Founders Matter
The story of ElevenLabs is not only about technology. It is also about vision.
Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski saw that voice is one of the most natural ways humans communicate. Text is useful, but voice carries emotion, tone, identity, and personality. By improving synthetic speech, they helped make AI feel more natural and accessible.
Their work also reflects a larger shift in technology. We are moving from typing commands into computers toward speaking with digital tools in a more human way. Voice AI could become a major interface for education, entertainment, customer service, accessibility, and communication.
Responsible AI Voice Technology
ElevenLabs also operates in a sensitive area. Realistic AI voices can be powerful, but they can also be misused for impersonation, fake audio, scams, or misinformation. Because of this, responsible development is extremely important.
The founders have had to build not only a product, but also safety systems, policies, and trust around AI-generated audio. ElevenLabs says its technology is used for dubbing, audiobooks, conversational AI, localization, and restoring voices, but realistic speech tools require careful safeguards and ethical use.
For creators and businesses, the basic rule is simple: AI voice should be used with consent, transparency, and respect.
Final Thoughts
Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski founded ElevenLabs with a simple but powerful idea: make digital speech sound natural, emotional, and accessible across languages.
From two friends in Poland to building one of the most valuable AI voice companies in the world, their journey shows how a personal frustration can become a global technology company. They combined Mati’s product and business experience with Piotr’s machine learning expertise, and together they helped push AI voice technology into the mainstream.
ElevenLabs is now much more than a text-to-speech tool. It is part of a bigger future where voice becomes a central way people create, communicate, learn, and interact with technology.
