ElevenLabs lands $80M from a16z and Sequoia – and becomes a unicorn(sifted.eu)
sifted.eu
ElevenLabs lands $80M from a16z and Sequoia – and becomes a unicorn
https://sifted.eu/articles/elevenlabs-80m-a16z-sequoia-becomes-unicorn
7 comments
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[deleted]
Seems like the Moat they might have is licensing is if they start getting celebrities or studios to license their tech. Very big market for animation studios to have this tech.
If they were the shop where you go to get a famous person's or character's voice I could see it reaching this valuation.
But as a pure tech play, seems likely that in 2-3 years the open source models will be good enough to not need an established player.
If you go on Fiverr and ask for a text narration, most of the people on there just use elevenlabs or a similar service and aren't actually doing the narration themselves but essentially just licensing their voice.
If they were the shop where you go to get a famous person's or character's voice I could see it reaching this valuation.
But as a pure tech play, seems likely that in 2-3 years the open source models will be good enough to not need an established player.
If you go on Fiverr and ask for a text narration, most of the people on there just use elevenlabs or a similar service and aren't actually doing the narration themselves but essentially just licensing their voice.
They have no moat at all and the tech is advancing faster than enterprise can keep up, unless you’re OpenAI. Seems like a wild evaluation to me.
asylteltine(1)
For any potential employee, my concern is that this raises expectations very high, and $80 million doesn't go that far these days, meaning they either need to hit profitability quickly or grow enough to raise more at a higher valuation in a short time frame. Requiring such high growth in 12-18 months would give major pause if I was considering joining a company.