en.Wedoany.com Reported - Voice AI startup ElevenLabs is in early-stage negotiations with investors regarding an employee tender offer that would value the company at approximately $22 billion. This figure nearly doubles the $11 billion valuation reached five months ago, when the company completed a $500 million Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
The discussions remain preliminary, and terms may change. The tender offer allows ElevenLabs employees to sell shares to external investors, a mechanism increasingly common among AI startups aimed at retaining talent while avoiding a mandatory full public listing. The offer is expected to close by September. ElevenLabs conducted its first employee share sale in September 2025 at a valuation of $6.6 billion, which itself was more than double the $3.3 billion valuation set during its Series C funding round in January 2025.
If the new offer price is as reported, the company will have grown from $3.3 billion to approximately $22 billion in about 18 months, outpacing most competitors in the AI sector. Founded in London in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski and CEO Mati Staniszewski, the company offers text-to-speech and tools for cloning voices for dubbing, audiobooks, and conversational agents.
Investors in the February funding round included BlackRock, Nvidia, a16z, and Iconiq Growth. TechCrunch reported that the company's annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2025 was approximately $330 million. Staniszewski stated that the company took five months to grow ARR from $200 million to $300 million, a pace that keeps investors closely engaged.
Capital competition in the voice AI sector is intense. Competitor Deepgram raised $130 million at a $1.3 billion valuation in January; Google, while deepening its cloud partnership with ElevenLabs, has also poached talent from other smaller voice labs in the field. ElevenLabs has also attracted government interest, including signing a memorandum of understanding with the UK government on public service accessibility and AI safety research, as well as a $11 million stake purchase by the Polish National Investment Fund last month.
The choice of a tender offer over a new equity round is primarily structural. A secondary sale provides liquidity to existing shareholders, mainly employees, rather than injecting new capital into the company; it allows private companies to set a latest valuation benchmark without diluting equity or incurring the disclosure obligations of a funding round. This approach also serves as a retention tool, enabling ElevenLabs to offer employees a valuation figure even when the timing for an IPO is not yet ripe.
Bloomberg sources did not specify the investors involved in this secondary sale, the number of shares employees are allowed to sell, or the revenue underpinning the new figure. The tender offer sets a new valuation mark but lacks the disclosure obligations of a funding round, meaning the $22 billion figure will face far less scrutiny than the number itself suggests. ElevenLabs has raised its valuation three times in less than two years, each time faster than the last, and achieved this through a mechanism that rewards employees without diluting existing shareholders. Staniszewski stated in March that the company aims to be ready for an IPO within two to three years, and a valuation mark of this scale will increase pressure to meet that timeline. Whether the $22 billion can be realized by September depends on investors whose names have yet to be disclosed, and the company shows no signs of slowing down.
