- Scaleup Europe Fund, a €5 billion car backed by Brussels, is in early talks to spend money on ElevenLabs
- The voice AI firm is searching for greater than $500 million, simply seven months after its final increase
- Either side declined to remark, and folks near the talks say a deal isn’t assured
ElevenLabs closed a $500 million spherical in February at an $11 billion valuation. Seven months later, it’s reportedly again on the desk — this time speaking to a fund that exists particularly to maintain firms prefer it from elevating all their late-stage capital in San Francisco.
Bloomberg experiences that the Scaleup Europe Fund, a €5 billion (roughly $5.8 billion) car managed by EQT and backed by the European Fee, Allianz, APG, Novo Holdings, CriteriaCaixa and Santander’s Mouro Capital, is in discussions to place cash into ElevenLabs’ new spherical, which the corporate is hoping will prime $500 million.
Scaleup Europe launched this yr with a particular mandate: cease Europe’s most useful non-public tech firms from having to lean on American cash to scale. It’s already put capital into ICEYE’s €1 billion Series F, Lovable’s $400 million round at a $13.3 billion valuation, Mistral AI’s €3 billion Series D and, this month, Tandem Health’s $100 million Sequence B.
Two Polish engineers, one very quick valuation curve
Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski met as youngsters in Warsaw and based ElevenLabs in 2022, Staniszewski leaving Palantir and Dąbkowski leaving Google to construct AI voices that didn’t sound like AI voices.
The corporate’s valuation has moved in odd jumps ever since: $1.1 billion after an $80 million Series B in January 2024, $3.3 billion after a $180 million Series C a yr later, then $11 billion after February’s $500 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital. Bloomberg reported in July that ElevenLabs was already in early talks for a secondary sale of roughly $22 billion, roughly double the February determine.
Poland has taken discover. In June, the state growth financial institution’s Vinci fund purchased an $11 million stake and used the deal to launch AI Lab Poland, a programme aimed toward constructing the nation’s subsequent AI firm fairly than simply claiming this one. Staniszewski has mentioned he needs ElevenLabs IPO-ready inside two to a few years.
Voice AI isn’t brief on competitors or capital
The larger context is that cash is flooding into voice AI usually, not simply into ElevenLabs. Nvidia simply backed Gradium’s seed extension, pushing the Paris startup previous $100 million, whereas OpenAI, Google and Microsoft all have their very own voice merchandise in market.
ElevenLabs’ reply has been to cease competing on artificial speech alone and construct throughout dubbing, conversational brokers and audio instruments without delay. This technique is projected to push annual recurring income from $350 million on the finish of 2025 to greater than $500 million inside the first 4 months of 2026.
Whether or not Scaleup Europe will really write a test stays an open query.
