Nothing Left Unsaid #72 - Mati Staniszewski: Building ElevenLabs into a $3 Billion AI Company
9 snips
Jul 16, 2025 
Mati Staniszewski, Co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, is transforming voice technology with innovations in accessibility for those with speech loss. He shares the inspiring journey of growing a startup to a $3 billion valuation and the profound impact of their AI on storytelling and content creation. Mati discusses breakthroughs like real-time voice technology and collaboration with Epic Games to bring iconic voices into gaming. He envisions a future where voice agents negotiate for us and break down language barriers—all while emphasizing genuine human connection.
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Impact Work Restores Real Voices
- ElevenLabs' impact program partners with nonprofits and has helped thousands regain voices, including ALS patients via Bridging Voices.
- They also recreated voices for public figures like Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton to continue public work.
Research, Distribution, Education
- Mati prioritizes research breakthroughs that enable low-latency, fully dynamic speech-to-speech experiences as the key barrier.
- He also highlights distribution and public education as critical obstacles to universal voice AI.
V3: Control, Data, And Multimodal Gains
- V3 unlocked controllability by teaching models to treat prompts as instructions and by creating annotated datasets for emotion and delivery.
- The multimodal foundation enables better understanding of laughter, whispering, and character detection across long audio like audiobooks.
