AI music-making platforms are in a race for supremacy – and now the world’s most dear firm is backing a key participant on this area.
In August, London and New York-headquartered AI audio startup ElevenLabs launched Eleven Music – a rival to Suno and Udio – marking its enlargement past voice synthesis into full AI music era.
In contrast to Suno and Udio, nevertheless, Eleven Music has already inked licensing agreements with outstanding rightsholders, together with Merlin and a probably precedent-setting deal with writer Kobalt.
Now, AI unicorn ElevenLabs has secured strategic funding from chip maker NVIDIA, the world’s most dear firm by market cap, value round $4.4 trillion as of Tuesday morning (September 23).
(NVIDIA has additionally simply this week confirmed to be investing as much as $100 billion in ChatGPT maker OpenAI.)
The brand new funding from NVIDIA (worth undisclosed) was confirmed by ElevenLabs co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski in the present day.
Eleven Labs beforehand raised a $180 million Sequence C funding spherical in January 2025, valuing it at $3.3 billion. Earlier this month, ElevenLabs launched a $100 million tender supply at a valuation of $6.6 billion to provide its workers “a chance for liquidity”.
The tender was led by present traders Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from others, together with a16z, Smash Capital, World Innovation Lab, and “a lot of different insiders”.
In a LinkedIn submit sharing a video of a latest assembly with NVIDIA’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang, ElevenLabs’s Staniszewski wrote: “We’re excited to share that NVIDIA is investing in ElevenLabs, with Jensen Huang’s assist.”
ElevenLabs’ video famous that it had beforehand partnered with NVIDIA in its “earliest days.”
Huang can be a long-time fan of ElevenLabs’ tech. This summer season, he used an AI voice to relate a number of chapters of his Computex keynote in each English and Mandarin.
In keeping with ElevenLabs, he was “capable of create the AI voice on ElevenLabs in underneath an hour with simply seven minutes of recorded audio”.
“Each time my voice is delivered digitally utilizing synthetic intelligence, it’s the ElevenLabs platform that I’m utilizing.”
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA
“Each time my voice is delivered digitally utilizing synthetic intelligence, it’s the ElevenLabs platform that I’m utilizing,” stated Huang within the newest video shared by Staniszewski.
He added: “Speech to textual content is simply know-how, proper? Textual content to Speech is artistry; that craft that goes right into a product that will get built-in with know-how, and also you guys are doing this at scale.”
Information of the funding into ElevenLabs arrives every week after NVIDIA unveiled a prolonged listing of UK-based companions throughout Jensen Huang’s go to to the nation.
“We’re excited to share that NVIDIA is investing in ElevenLabs, with Jensen Huang’s assist.”
Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs was recognized by NVIDIA as one among its UK-based companions, noting in a weblog submit that ElevenLabs “develops AI voice know-how that generates pure, ultrarealistic speech in over 70 languages utilizing NVIDIA software program and NVIDIA DGX B200 techniques”.
NVIDIA added: “Its fashions energy real-time conversational brokers, localization, storytelling and accessibility instruments for individuals who have misplaced their voices, along with voicing audiobooks and animating online game characters.”
ElevenLabs confirmed final week that it “has labored intently with NVIDIA within the UK and globally” and that “NVIDIA’s assist has helped the corporate construct sooner and ship stronger merchandise”.
Jensen Huang’s go to to the UK coincided with US President Donald Trump’s State go to to the UK, throughout which US companies dedicated to a £150 billion funding within the UK’s tech sector.
“Final week’s US state go to to the UK strengthened AI partnerships between the 2 international locations and introduced main new investments from American firms into the UK tech ecosystem,” wrote ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski in his LinkedIn submit.
“With our firm’s roots rising deeper in each locations, we couldn’t be extra optimistic concerning the highway forward.”
In Staniszewski’s video of his assembly with Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s boss tells ElevenLabs’ Co-founder to “make the most of every part that NVIDIA has to supply”.
Huang added: ‘If there are any locations on the planet that you simply wish to go to, however can’t, tell us. If there’s an organization you need to get to that you simply’re not in [with] but, let me know. We’ll simply sort of get you all over the place.”
ElevenLabs launched publicly in January 2023.
The NVIDIA funding in ElevenLabs arrives because the latter firm scales its UK and US operations. In keeping with ElevenLabs, over the previous 12 months, its UK headcount grew from 18 to 68 and its US headcount from 10 to 61, whereas the corporate’s European workforce expanded from 25 to 91.
ElevenLabs has workplaces in New York, San Francisco, Warsaw, Bangalore, Tokyo, and London.
In December 2024, it introduced a partnership with BMG’s mother or father firm Bertelsmann, which included plans so as to add AI-generated music options.
ElevenLabs has additionally not too long ago signed a coaching pact with SourceAudio, giving it entry to hundreds of thousands of pre-cleared songs for AI coaching by SourceAudio’s dataset licensing program.
ElevenLabs’ proactive strategy to music licensing at present stands in distinction to opponents Suno and Udio, each of that are dealing with lawsuits from main report labels over alleged copyright infringement of their coaching knowledge.
Whereas business rumors counsel some main music firms are in licensing discussions with Suno and/or Udio, no official agreements have been confirmed so far.Music Enterprise Worldwide
