Nvidia invests strategically in ElevenLabs, boosting the UK startup’s growth and strengthening AI voice tech with GPU expertise.
Nvidia is to make a “strategic” investment in UK AI startup ElevenLabs, as the AI-audio generator looks to bring in strategic partners to grow its business over the long term. The investment for an undisclosed amount marks the first time the US chip giant will have invested in UK unicorn ElevenLabs, which was founded in 2022.
ElevenLabs CEO and co-founder Mati Staniszewski said, “We need strategic partners. It is a good combination where they come in with more than capital. They are strategically bringing in the GPUs, which they have inside-out knowledge of. It is mainly from the strategic angle.
“Currently, we don’t need the extra capital and now we are thinking about the strategic partners we can bring in for the next ten years.”
The investment will be structured as a standard in-between round, said Staniszewski, speaking today at an event in London hosted by ElevenLabs, showcasing how companies were using its AI voice agents.
Staniszewski did not reveal details of how much Nvidia invested in ElevenLabs, which Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia also back. ElevenLabs trains its own text-to-speech and speech-to-text AI models, powered by Nvidia’s GPUs.
Last week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang listed several UK startups Nvidia was investing in at an event in London, as part of a giant £2bn investment in UK AI startups. These were Wayve, Oxa, Revolut, PolyAI, Synthesia, Latent Labs and Basecamp Research.
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ElevenLabs was also on the list, but Huang did not read its name out, as it was on a different page from the other startups mentioned. Huang did, though, namecheck ElevenLabs as a notable startup building in the UK.
Earlier this month, ElevenLabs confirmed an employee share sale valuing it at $6.6bn, which was double its valuation nine months earlier. In January this year, ElevenLabs tripled its valuation to $3.3 bn following a $180m funding round.
