ElevenLabs tops $500 million ARR and adds BlackRock and NVIDIA to Series D
May 8, 2026
On May 6, 2026, ElevenLabs reported more than $500 million in annual recurring revenue and extended its Series D with BlackRock, NVIDIA, Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom past $550 million.
ElevenLabs crosses $500 million ARR and pulls in fresh backers
On May 6, 2026, AI voice synthesis company ElevenLabs put out two updates at once: annual recurring revenue (ARR) is now above 500 million US dollars, and the Series D round – originally closed at 500 million dollars in February 2026 at an 11 billion dollar valuation – has been extended past 550 million dollars with new investors. Tech.eu and The AI Insider report that BlackRock, Wellington, NVIDIA, Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom have joined, alongside high-profile individuals such as Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria and Hwang Dong-hyuk.
How ARR has moved since 2025
According to ElevenLabs, ARR was around 350 million dollars at the end of 2025; the 500 million mark was crossed within a few months. That jump tracks the company's shift from a pure text-to-speech tool to so-called Conversational Agent APIs, which firms use to run phone bots, sales and support agents in multiple languages.
What the new investor list signals
BlackRock brings a classic institutional asset manager onto the cap table; Deutsche Telekom adds a European telecom that could fold ElevenLabs voices into its own voice assistants and call-center stack. NVIDIA is investor and supplier of the GPUs ElevenLabs trains on. Salesforce, in turn, is integrating ElevenLabs voices into its Agentforce and Service Cloud products, which broadens the channel into the U.S. mid-market and enterprise. The film-star participation – Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria – is more about marketing, but is also relevant for Hollywood-side voice cloning deals.
Where the money is going, according to ElevenLabs
The release names three priorities: scaling the voice-agent platform, adding new languages and voices, and lowering the price of the voice and agentic APIs. Specific per-minute or per-token prices were not announced on May 6, 2026.
Why this matters
ElevenLabs is one of the few pure-play AI voice companies with a nine-figure ARR and a serious enterprise channel in Europe. The 500-million-dollar mark is not just a PR number: it shows that voice AI – which means phone calls, hotlines, voice assistants in banks and insurers – has moved out of demo land and into real cost centers fast. For German-speaking enterprises, Deutsche Telekom's presence on the cap table matters because it ties data residency, German voice quality and EU AI Act conformity to a European carrier. At the same time, the upside grows with the risk: misuse of AI voices in fraud calls or deepfake voicemail is moving to a new scale that regulators are starting to address.
Practical example
A German insurance call center with 600 staff is testing an ElevenLabs voice agent in 2026 to take first-line claims. Today, a typical first claim call takes about six minutes. With a Conversational Agent API speaking German, 60 percent of standard cases could run without human handoff, with the rest escalated. Having Deutsche Telekom on the investor list makes the supply chain – from the phone SIP trunk to the mobile leg to the voice-agent output – cleaner politically and contractually than a direct contract with a purely U.S.-based AI vendor.
💡 In plain English
ElevenLabs is a company that builds AI voices that let machines talk like real people. It is making so much money that big investors like BlackRock and NVIDIA want in, because more and more companies are using ElevenLabs voices for phone hotlines and help bots.
Key Takeaways
- →On May 6, 2026, ElevenLabs reported ARR above $500 million, up from $350 million at the end of 2025.
- →The Series D, originally closed at $500 million in February 2026, has been extended past $550 million.
- →New investors include BlackRock, Wellington, NVIDIA, Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
- →The Series D valuation remains around $11 billion.
- →High-profile individuals such as Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria and Hwang Dong-hyuk are joining.
- →ElevenLabs is signaling price cuts for its voice and agentic APIs but did not publish concrete prices.
Sources & Context
- ElevenLabs adds BlackRock, Nvidia and Jamie Foxx to $550M+ Series D (Tech.eu)
- ElevenLabs Surpasses $500M ARR as BlackRock, Nvidia and Celebrity Investors Join $500M Series D (The AI Insider)
- ElevenLabs Hits $500M ARR with New Investment from NVIDIA and BlackRock (TechStory)
- ElevenLabs hits $500 million ARR, announces Series D at $11B valuation (NewsBytes)
- ElevenLabs Names BlackRock, Jamie Foxx and Eva Longoria Among New Backers as ARR Tops $500M (TechBooky)