ElevenLabs, the popular AI voice startup has raised $80 million in Series B this week, valuing it over a billion dollars overall, up from $100 million last year.
The new funding will be used for enhancing safety measures and ethical development of AI technology, says ElevenLabs CEO. The company has also launched a marketplace to allow users to create and trade AI voices and earn compensation based on their usage.
A Digital Marketplace for AI Voices
After the AI chatbot, the AI voice industry is growing rapidly, with constituent companies raising hundreds of millions in funding annually. One such example is ElevenLabs, the biggest player in this space, which received $80 million in Series B this week.
Led by Andreessen Horowitz, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and entrepreneur Daniel Gross, the round also had Sequoia Capital, Smash Capital, SV Angel, BroadLight Capital and Credo Ventures as the participants, bringing the raised value to $101 million. This values the company over $1 billion, up from $100 million last June.
All these numbers seem good, but the company is plagued with numerous allegations of it’s tools being used for illicit purposes. For example, some 4chan users have reportedly used Emma Watson’s voice(one of the default options available in ElevenLabs) to share hateful content. The Verge reporter showed how easy it was to create and share racist remarks with the ElevenLabs tool, while a Vox reporter cloned a voice to fool a bank’s authentication system!
Yet, ElevenLabs is confident to face all these challenges, especially after the fresh round of funding. It’s CEO Mati Staniszewski says the new money will be used for product development, expanding ElevenLabs’ infrastructure and team, AI research and “enhancing safety measures to ensure responsible and ethical development of AI technology”.
This aside, the company has also announced a marketplace for creating and selling AI voices, based on their internal tools. Currently in the alpha version, the marketplace will let users create a voice, verify and share it. Also, they’re entitled to receive compensation based on it’s usage.
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