ElevenLabs' CEO taking the TechCrunch Disrupt stage signals voice AI's transition from experimental novelty to enterprise necessity. But the real question isn't whether the technology works—it's whether we're ready for a world where anyone's voice can say anything.
The Polish Problem That Became a $3.3 Billion Solution
When Mati Staniszewski takes the AI stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 this October, he'll be representing more than just another unicorn success story. The 29-year-old co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs embodies the peculiar alchemy of technical brilliance and market timing that defines our current AI moment.
ElevenLabs has a "pretty convincing founding story: it all began with two Polish entrepreneurs who were sick of how movie voiceovers are done in the country. While in many other countries English films are dubbed by as many voices as characters, in Poland entire movies get one (male) voiceover, which is played on top of the original English speech." From this distinctly local frustration, Staniszewski and co-founder Piotr Dąbkowski built what they now describe as "something comparable to OpenAI for audio."
The numbers suggest they're not entirely wrong. ElevenLabs raised $180 million in Series C funding at a $3.3 billion valuation in January 2025, with backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and a roster of strategic investors including Deutsche Telekom and Salesforce. The company now employs around 70 people across offices in London, Warsaw, and New York, with plans for expansion into Paris, Singapore, Brazil, and Mexico.
What makes ElevenLabs genuinely compelling isn't just its valuation—it's the sophistication of what they've built. Their Professional Voice Cloning requires "a minimum of 30 minutes of audio data for training and produces a voice replica that's very faithful to your original voice," while their Instant Voice Cloning can "quickly replicates your voice from short audio samples" in under a minute.
The platform supports over 70 languages and can clone voices across linguistic boundaries—meaning a voice trained in English can speak Mandarin or Hindi while maintaining the original speaker's vocal characteristics. In June 2025, ElevenLabs released Eleven v3, "a new text-to-speech model that supports more than 70 languages, natural multi-speaker dialogue, and audio tags like [excited], [whispers], and [sighs]."
This isn't just academic achievement. Since launch, "creators and businesses on the platform have collectively generated over 100 years of audio and their technology is already being used by employees at over 60% of Fortune 500 companies." Time magazine uses it to narrate articles, Nvidia employs it for corporate video translation, and Disney has integrated it into production workflows.
But technical excellence brings its own complications. ElevenLabs "was criticized after users were able to abuse its software to generate controversial statements in the vocal style of celebrities, public officials, and other famous individuals, particularly attracting attention after users on 4chan used the tool to share hateful messages."
More recently, the company faced controversy when the daughter of deceased French voice actor Claude Dorval "accused the company of breaching an agreement that it would only clone his voice as a 'trial' of the technology" after discovering ElevenLabs had used her father's cloned voice in an upcoming action movie without final approval.
These incidents highlight the fundamental tension in voice AI: the same technology that enables a lawyer who lost her voice to cancer to "regain" it for court appearances can also be weaponized for harassment, fraud, or unauthorized commercial use. ElevenLabs has responded with security measures including Voice Captcha verification and AI detection tools, but the cat-and-mouse game between protective measures and malicious use continues.
Staniszewski's appearance at Disrupt comes at an inflection point for voice AI. "I think over the last year or two, it's become clear that we are a leader in voice," says Staniszewski. "We're at the forefront of the models. And suddenly, we're in a different position, and you're seeing a lot of competition emerging — which is exciting. But there's definitely a growing sense of pressure, if not outright stress."
The competitive pressure is real. OpenAI has launched its own text-to-voice models, Amazon is expanding its voice capabilities, and startups like Nara Labs are making waves with open-source alternatives. According to Staniszewski, ElevenLabs' advantage lies in its "multilingual focus" compared to competitors like OpenAI, which "largely concentrates on English."
The company's roadmap reflects this global ambition. ElevenLabs "plans to further its reach globally ahead of an initial public offering" with the "eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years."
What makes Staniszewski's TechCrunch talk particularly relevant is his background bridging technical innovation with business implementation. Before ElevenLabs, he worked as a Deployment Strategist at Palantir and helped launch BlackRock's Aladdin Wealth platform—experience that shaped his understanding of how cutting-edge technology actually gets adopted in enterprise environments.
This perspective matters because voice AI's next phase isn't about making better demos—it's about seamless integration into existing workflows. The companies succeeding in AI deployment aren't necessarily those with the most impressive technology; they're the ones solving real operational problems without requiring complete infrastructure overhauls.
Staniszewski's Disrupt appearance will likely focus on three key themes: the technical roadmap toward truly seamless voice translation, the business models emerging around voice AI, and the governance frameworks needed to balance innovation with responsibility.
Expect discussions of "automatic translations that just sound good out of the box" and multi-voice audiobook production that doesn't require extensive human intervention. But also expect questions about content authentication, consent frameworks, and the broader implications of a world where any voice can say anything.
ElevenLabs didn't just build superior technology—they identified a specific problem (inadequate dubbing), solved it with proprietary innovation, then expanded systematically into adjacent use cases.
More importantly, they've maintained focus on practical applications rather than getting lost in the philosophical implications of their technology. While competitors debate the existential questions of synthetic media, ElevenLabs is busy building the infrastructure that will define how voice AI actually gets used.
At Winsome Marketing, we help growth teams navigate exactly these kinds of technology adoption curves—identifying the practical applications that drive adoption while building strategies that scale with the technology's maturation. Because in the voice AI revolution, success belongs not to those with the most impressive demos, but to those who understand how humans actually want to use these tools.