A Warsaw friendship, a monotone film narrator and a Soho office. This is how two engineers built a voice company that investors now value at $22bn.
We rarely notice a voice until it suddenly starts sounding off.
For Mati Staniszewski, that moment came watching films in Poland, and it led to a company with more than 800 employees in about 20 countries.
That is the short version of the ElevenLabs founder story, the longer one starts with two friends in Warsaw and runs through London, and it also raises the question every founder hopes to be asked: how do you grow this fast and still keep hold of the plot?
Why did two Warsaw friends care so much about film dubbing?
Mati Staniszewski met Piotr Dąbkowski at the Copernicus high school in Warsaw, and they have been best friends ever since, as he said in a 2023 interview.
Then they both headed west.
Staniszewski studied mathematics at Imperial College London, according to the company’s biography, and later worked as a deployment strategist at Palantir.
Dąbkowski, on the other hand, became a machine-learning engineer at Google.
The idea originally came from home, so in Poland, foreign films are often dubbed by a single narrator who reads every single line in the same flat tone, there is no cast, whatsoever.
Forbes described the effect in its profile of the pair, and Staniszewski’s verdict was quite blunt.
“Ask any Polish person, and they will tell you it’s terrible.”— Staniszewski, Forbes
So they asked whether any software could do better, and in May 2022, Forbes reports, Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski left their jobs and put in the first $100,000 for model training themselves.
The first public model followed in January 2023, and within weeks, users were cloning celebrity voices on 4chan to say abusive things.
ElevenLabs admitted the misuse, stopped free users from cloning voices and promised a detector for AI-generated audio.
How does a start-up go from $9m to $22bn in just four years?
The first ElevenLabs valuation, set with that opening round, was about $9m.
A $19m round in 2023, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, came next, and then came an $80m Series B in January 2024 and a $180m Series C a year later at $3.3bn, and then in February 2026, a $500m ElevenLabs Series D led by Sequoia put the company at $11bn.
Then each ElevenLabs funding step pushed the valuation higher.
On 30 September, came the headline figure, which was that the ElevenLabs valuation reached $22bn.
We think it is worth being precise about how.
It came from a $300m tender offer, led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price, in which staff sold shares, it was not a new funding round, it still tells us something, which is that investors will pay that price for employees’ shares.
Behind the ElevenLabs valuation sits a business that is growing.
Mati Staniszewski told TechCrunch that ElevenLabs is now at $600m in annual recurring revenue, with at least 55 per cent of it classic enterprise work. Klarna runs first-line phone support for 35 million US customers on the platform.
Deutsche Telekom, Cisco and Adobe are also named customers.
Is ElevenLabs really a London company?
Reuters and City AM both call it London-based.
ElevenLabs says London is its European HQ and centre for worldwide operations.
The Wardour Street office in Soho opened in August 2024, and ElevenLabs London started with 20 staff, a target of 40 within six months and 100 in the coming years.
City AM now describes London as the company’s largest base, and by the company’s own account, ElevenLabs London is far more than a branch office.
“We can’t think of a better place to open our central hub.”— Staniszewski, ElevenLabs blog, August 2024
Mati Staniszewski added that he and Piotr Dąbkowski came to the UK to study more than ten years ago. Two Poles who arrived as students now lead a company whose largest base is ElevenLabs London.
We think the UK ecosystem should enjoy that.
Wikipedia says ElevenLabs is based in London but legally incorporated in the US, and lists a New York headquarters too. Forbes calls it a Warsaw- and London-based startup, and Polish outlets still tell the story of Polish startup ElevenLabs as their own.
We would say London-based, never British, and leave the rest to readers.
What does a voice company owe the person on the other end of the line?
Mati Staniszewski has a clear answer.
TechCrunch asked him whether businesses should disclose when someone is talking to an agent and not a human.
“I think there should be disclosure at this time.”— Staniszewski, TechCrunch, 24 September 2026
He said people are not used to it yet and that the common pattern is that you do not want to feel cheated on that call.
We think a founder who says that out loud is betting on trust, and trust is what a voice company has to earn. In one Polish healthcare deployment he described agents now phone patients to remind them of appointments, because 18 per cent of patients miss them.
What comes next for the ElevenLabs CEO?
An ElevenLabs IPO is reported for 2028, and when asked to confirm, Staniszewski told TechCrunch the company is preparing the foundation to do it in the next years, though whether it happens will depend on the time and place.
The interviewer called “years” vague, and Staniszewski laughed. The company is not waiting for the listing to widen its reach. On 10 September 2026 it signed a multi-year licensing deal with Universal Music Group, its first with a major label.
Search for Mati Staniszewski ElevenLabs today and you will find a valuation, a London office and a Warsaw friendship.
Somewhere in Warsaw, a single narrator is still reading every role in the same voice.
How long before they have company?
Editorial Note
This profile is based on secondary research.
We have not spoken to Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dąbkowski or anyone at ElevenLabs.
If you are a founder who has built a UK hub for a company that started elsewhere or run an employee share sale of your own, we would definitely love to hear from you.
Read next: How the UK Startup Secondaries Market Gives Founders a New Exit Route
Sources: ElevenLabs (London office announcement, 14 August 2024; Series D announcement, 4 February 2026; “Founder Stories” interview; Forbes (1 December 2025); TechCrunch (24 September 2026); Reuters (4 February 2026); City AM (30 September 2026); UKTN (22 January 2024); Unite.ai (30 September 2026); Music Business Worldwide (10 September 2026); AFP via Daily Star (31 January 2023); ITWorld Canada; Milken Institute speaker biography; Wikipedia (ElevenLabs entry)
