On September 30, 2026, ElevenLabs announced the completion of a $300 million employee tender offer, valuing the company at $22 billion — double the $11 billion from its $500 million Series D in February. The AI voice company founded in 2022 is turning talkative AI agents into serious business.
The numbers: who is buying
Led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price, with Andreessen Horowitz and other existing backers plus new investors EQT and Goldman Sachs participating. This is ElevenLabs' second employee tender: in September 2025 it ran a $100 million tender at a $6.6 billion valuation. Unlike a conventional round, a tender offer lets employees and early shareholders sell stock to investors — not necessarily bringing new capital into the company.
Where the money comes from: enterprises drive half the revenue
Enterprise customers contribute 55% of revenue; ElevenAgents handles more than 15 million conversations a week — three times February's level — and ARR has more than tripled since February. These voice agents handle refunds, renew insurance policies, and book appointments; customers include Stripe and Deutsche Telekom, and the governments of Ukraine and Greece are deploying the technology too. "Enterprises and governments are rapidly adopting expressive voice agents," said CEO Mati Staniszewski.
Why a tender offer instead of another funding round
For fast-growing AI unicorns, the tender offer is becoming a standard retention tool: partial cash-outs mean employees don't need to jump ship to get liquid. Wellington and T. Rowe Price stepping in as buyers is itself a bullish signal.
The industry signal: voice agents are having their moment
The deal shows capital markets pricing in real AI-agent deployment, with voice among the first categories to work at scale: in customer service and back-office automation, machines that listen and speak cut costs directly. Heat in adjacent lanes is lifting valuations across the board — OpenAI is reportedly seeking $300 billion at a $1.4 trillion pre-money valuation — and even the giants are moving in, with Meta pushing its personal AI assistant Muse toward small businesses. ElevenLabs is betting that when this voice-agent wave washes over everything, it will already be infrastructure.
