ElevenLabs' $22B mark prices the agent calls, not the voices
A $300 million employee tender closed on 30 September 2026 at $22 billion, double the February mark, and moved paper between holders rather than paying the company. The same day, a US appeals court affirmed that training on copyrighted work to build a rival is not fair use, and the brief behind that ruling cites ElevenLabs' own Kobalt license as proof such rights carry a price.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
A tender that raised nothing
Wellington and T. Rowe Price led the $300 million tender that valued ElevenLabs at $22 billion, a secondary in which employees and existing holders sold and no new capital necessarily reached the company 12. EQT, Goldman Sachs, GIC and Ontario Teachers' bought their first stakes 12. It is the third mark in twelve months, after $6.6 billion in September 2025 and $11 billion in February 2026 2.
Revenue doubled, so the mark followed
Annualized run-rate revenue climbed from roughly $330 million at the start of the year to over $600 million 3. The multiple barely moved: about 33 times revenue in February, about 37 times now. Agents did the work, handling more than 15 million conversations a week, triple the February volume, with enterprise customers at 55 percent of revenue and clients including Stripe, Deutsche Telekom and the governments of Greece and Ukraine 41.
Revenue doubled and the mark followed: the multiple held near 33 to 37 times
- Valuation mark
- Annualized revenue run-rate
Data
| Valuation mark | Annualized revenue run-rate | |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 2025 | $6.6B | — |
| Feb 2026 | $11B | $0.33B |
| Sept 2026 | $22B | $0.6B |
The bill for the voices arrived the same day
On 30 September 2026 the Third Circuit affirmed that Ross Intelligence's copying of Westlaw headnotes to train a rival legal search tool was not fair use, in a 32-page precedential opinion unsealed that day, the first US appellate word on fair use in AI training 56. The limit is explicit: Ross's engine was not generative, so the ruling leaves the Suno and Udio fair-use cases open, and dispositive motions in the Suno case are due 22 June 2027 56.
The music industry's brief behind the ruling pointed the court to Kobalt's license with ElevenLabs as proof that a market for training rights already exists 5. ElevenLabs, for its part, signed its first major-label agreement, with Universal, on 10 September 2026 7.
Consent at ten seconds
Eleven v4, shipped 28 September, clones a voice from 10 seconds of audio in more than 90 languages, and its launch post never mentions consent 89. Google's model, five days earlier, asks for a 30-second sample and a spoken yes, matched against the sample before a clone is made 9.
Performers pay at least $11 to be cloned and earn about $1.20 an hour when the voice is used 10. SAG-AFTRA's standard is informed consent 10. The headline use stays small either way: AI audiobooks earned $729,000 in 2025, 0.03 percent of a $2.43 billion market 10.
What to watch
Chief executive Mati Staniszewski is aiming at an IPO "in the next years" 3; Futurum's Nick Patience counts two ways out, bought or public 10. If the generative cases follow Ross, Warner, Universal and Sony gain leverage over training data ahead of the 22 June 2027 motions, and ElevenLabs carries the input-cost and IPO-timing risk 5. The $22 billion prices the phone calls; the courts are starting to price the voices.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
