ElevenLabs Names BlackRock, Jamie Foxx and Eva Longoria Among New Backers as ARR Tops $500M

Voice AI startup ElevenLabs has disclosed a new group of investors tied to its previously announced $500 million Series D round, while also revealing it has crossed $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and expanded its enterprise customer base.

The Series D, first announced in February, now includes major institutional investors BlackRock, Wellington, D.E. Shaw and Schroders. Strategic corporate investors named in the round include NVIDIA, Salesforce, Santander, Dutch telco KPN and Deutsche Telekom. On the individual side, new backers include actor Jamie Foxx, actor and producer Eva Longoria, and Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk.

ElevenLabs said it has surpassed $500 million in ARR, a sharp increase from nearly $350 million at the end of last year. According to co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski, the company added $100 million in net new ARR in the first quarter of 2026 alone, finishing Q1 at roughly $450 million in ARR before crossing the $500 million mark.

The company’s valuation has been rising quickly alongside that revenue growth. ElevenLabs’ valuation climbed from $6.6 billion in September to $11 billion by February, when the Series D was first announced.

Alongside the primary funding, ElevenLabs also completed a $100 million tender offer, its second in about six months following a similar move last September. Tender offers typically allow existing shareholders such as employees or early investors to sell a portion of their holdings, though the company did not spell out specific terms in the material cited.

Staniszewski said in a blog post that ElevenLabs plans to open an avenue for retail investors to participate through Robinhood Ventures. He did not provide further details on how that program will work or when it will launch.

The company is positioning its technology as a core interface for businesses, arguing that voice is becoming a critical customer channel. In the past quarter, ElevenLabs has signed enterprise contracts with Deutsche Telekom, Revolut and Klarna, underscoring a growing focus on large-scale deployments.

Deutsche Telekom, which is investing in ElevenLabs through its venture arm T. Capital, framed the startup as central to its industrial AI strategy. “Voice is the highest-stakes channel for any customer interaction, and the bar for quality, latency, and security is extremely high,” said Karine Peters, Managing Director at T. Capital, in a statement. She described ElevenLabs as a “foundational enabler” of Deutsche Telekom’s broader Industrial AI vision, pointing to use cases such as voice-as-a-service, multilingual automation and in-network AI agents. Peters said the company is “uniquely positioned to reshape how businesses interact with customers across all channels.”

Staniszewski has emphasized that consumers are unlikely to trust systems that sound overtly synthetic or behave in ways that feel unnatural. He has argued for building “human-level AI voice models” to avoid experiences that feel robotic or “interact strangely,” positioning realism and reliability as requirements, not extras, for widespread adoption of voice AI.

To deepen its research capabilities, ElevenLabs recently acquired the team from Polish voice AI startup Papla. The move is intended to bolster the company’s research bench, although specific product integrations or timelines were not detailed in the information provided.

Together, the fresh capital, new investors and enterprise wins suggest ElevenLabs is racing to secure a leading position in the emerging market for high-quality, AI-powered voice interfaces, as businesses look beyond text and chat toward more natural, spoken interactions with customers.