ElevenLabs doubles valuation to $22 billion in employee tender offer

Voice AI startup ElevenLabs has cleared employees to sell a portion of their vested options at a $22 billion valuation (about 81 billion shekels), twice the level at which it raised $500 million in February. The transaction takes the form of a $300 million secondary tender offer rather than a primary round, so the proceeds go directly to employees and early investors instead of the company’s balance sheet.

Wellington and T. Rowe Price, two large institutional managers that typically hold shares past an IPO, co-led the offer. The company said the move is designed as a retention tool: employees holding liquid equity are less likely to leave for rivals in a market where AI talent is snapped up quickly. It reflects a growing trend among fast-growing startups that want to delay a public listing while still providing liquidity to their teams.

This is the second secondary the four-year-old company has approved. In September 2025 a $100 million tender priced the business at $6.6 billion; a $500 million primary round in February 2026 valued it at $11 billion; the latest $300 million secondary now puts it at $22 billion. The pace underscores strong investor appetite for generative audio technology and illustrates how private valuations can surge when supply is limited and demand for realistic audio models is rising.

Headquartered in New York and London, ElevenLabs builds models that produce speech and sound effects at a realism level difficult to distinguish from human recordings. The technology is used today for automated dubbing, audiobooks, accessibility tools and creator-focused content products. The company has not published standard benchmarks against competitors such as PlayHT or open models like Bark, so comparisons rest mainly on demos and real-world adoption.

Last week TechCrunch met with co-founder and chief executive Mati Staniszewski. The company disclosed no IPO or further fundraising plans, but the new valuation places it among Europe’s most valuable private startups — a status that brings expectations of significant revenue and pressure to defend its intellectual property as regulation around deepfakes and voice rights takes shape.