ElevenLabs, a London, UK-based speech AI startup, secured $2 million in pre-seed funding and has also released a beta version of its text-to-speech platform for English and Polish.
The round was led by Credo Ventures, with participation from Concept Ventures and angel investors, including Peter Czaban and Tytus Cytowski.
The funds will be used to launch its beta platform and improve its product line. With a portion of the money going toward automated dubbing research, the organization’s long-term objective is to make speech understandable in any language.
“The platform we’re launching now is all about turning text into top-quality spoken audio. We want to let people enjoy their favorite book or newsletter by giving a voice to all the authors, creators, and developers who couldn’t afford one," says Mati Staniszewski, co-founder, and CEO of ElevenLabs.
The company also offers effective speech synthesis tools in a variety of languages. Using OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative AI chatbot, ElevenLabs recreated Steve Jobs’ voice to read a brief description of the company.
The startups’ AI speeches are produced using specialized deep-learning models. The startup’s artificial voices use natural language understanding to understand what is being said in context. Users of ElevenLabs’ platform can choose from the company’s library of artificial voices or quickly create a human voice clone.
Currently, ElevenLabs provides a monthly subscription service with a free tier for experimenting with the technology and a standard tier for content creators.
Company: ElevenLabs Inc.
Raised: $2.0M
Round: pre-Seed Round
Funding Month: January 2023
Lead Investors: VC Credo Ventures
Additional Investors: Concept Ventures and angel investors, including Peter Czaban and Tytus Cytowski
Company Website: https://beta.elevenlabs.io/
Software Category: AI Voice Synthesis Software
About the Company: Founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, ElevenLabs is a research company that develops AI voice synthesis software for creators and publishers. Its tools render remarkably lifelike speech and can adjust intonation and inflections based on context or user instruction. ElevenLabs' platform seeks to provide the necessary quality and versatility to become a one-stop shop for voicing news, newsletters, books, and videos. Key features include text-based speech generation, voice cloning, voice design, and -soon- project workflow for narration editing. The company’s long-term goal is to make spoken content universally accessible in any language and voice.
Source: https://techfundingnews.com/as-generative-ai-booms-this-british-startup-secures-2m-to-imitate-human-voices/