Voice AI company ElevenLabs announced on September 30 that it has completed a $300 million tender offer allowing employees to sell shares, valuing the company at $22 billion — double the $11 billion valuation from its Series D round this February. The round was led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price.
A tender offer works differently from a normal funding round: the cash doesn't go into the company's accounts. Instead, outside investors buy shares directly from employees and early shareholders. For a private company, it's a common way to let staff cash in some of their equity, and the price paid often becomes a reference point for the next valuation.
Who bought in
New investors in this round include EQT, Goldman Sachs, Singapore's GIC, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP), Sapphire Ventures and BDT & MSD. Existing shareholders a16z, Lightspeed, ICONIQ, D.E. Shaw, Evantic, DISRUPTIVE and Alkeon also took part.
Sovereign wealth and pension funds make up a notable share of the list. GIC and OTPP are both long-horizon investors that typically come in when a company is closer to going public; T. Rowe Price and Wellington are also common pre-IPO investors among mutual funds. ElevenLabs hasn't given an IPO timeline, so this list is only a side signal.
"The team is able to make improvements at every layer of the stack, allowing them to execute at high velocity and deliver immediate value."
— Emma Norchet, T. Rowe Price, in the announcement.
The numbers the company shared
The announcement offered relatively few operating metrics, focused mainly on the enterprise and agent businesses:
- Enterprise customers account for 55% of revenue;
- Headcount has passed 800;
- ElevenAgents, its voice agent product, now handles 15 million conversations a week — three times the February figure — and annualized revenue for that product line has also tripled since February;
- It supports more than 90 languages, which the company says covers a population of 5.5 billion;
- The company says voice agents resolve issues 31% faster than text-based chat agents.
That last figure is ElevenLabs' own, without a stated methodology or sample size. The company also didn't disclose a specific number for its overall annual recurring revenue (ARR) this time.
CEO Mati Staniszewski framed the direction around how people interact with AI: "AI should interact with people the way we interact with each other."
A rough read on the valuation multiple
ElevenLabs last disclosed ARR in May: about $500 million at the end of the first quarter, up roughly 43% from $350 million at the end of the prior year.
Dividing that $500 million into the $22 billion valuation puts the multiple at roughly 44 times ARR. That's a rough estimate — the denominator is a six-month-old figure, and the real multiple depends on where revenue stands today. If growth holds at the pace seen in the first quarter, ARR could approach $1 billion by year-end, which would bring the multiple down to the low 20s, closer to where top AI application companies are currently priced in private markets. That projection assumes growth doesn't slow, and the company hasn't given any full-year revenue guidance.
Another useful comparison is the company's own valuation trajectory: $9 million in 2022, $11 billion in February 2026, $22 billion in September. The first stretch took four years to grow more than a thousandfold; the second doubled in seven months. That employees were able to sell $300 million in shares at a $22 billion valuation shows that at least some long-term institutional investors are willing to pay that price — whether the next formal round or IPO prices above it will depend on enterprise growth over the next two quarters.
Sources: CocoLoop, ElevenLabs official blog; the company's announcement was used to verify the tender amount, valuation, investor list and operating figures, the ARR figure reflects the company's public disclosure from May, and the valuation multiple is an editorial estimate.