HeyGen gives its voice model away free, charges $99 a month to clone yours; ElevenLabs valued at $22 billion
HeyGen bundled the voice model it calls the world's best into its platform for free and kept one paid item, a $99-a-month clone of your own voice. Nine days earlier, a $300 million tender valued rival ElevenLabs at $22 billion, about 37 times its $600 million run rate.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The avatar posts daily, the broker does not
Since October 8, Ryan Serhant has published a video every day without filming one. @HeySerhant is a year-long channel built on the real estate broker's HeyGen~$500M — HeyGen, private, latest valuation ~$500M avatar and cloned voice, every post labeled as AI 1. The next morning, the company behind that deal shipped what it runs on: HeyGen Voice, a model HeyGen says debuted at No. 1 on Artificial Analysis' leaderboard, free inside its platform and API 2.
A $22 billion mark, nine days before the free model
On September 30, a $300 million employee tender led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price valued ElevenLabs at $22 billion, double February's Series D, with existing investors and employees selling 45. Chief executive Mati Staniszewski had put the run rate at $600 million six days earlier, 55% of it enterprise 6. That mark is roughly 37 times revenue. HeyGen, which repeated in its launch release the $200 million ARR figure it first published on June 25, is a third the size; its last priced round valued it at $500 million in June 2024 2310.
ElevenLabs' valuation doubled twice in 20 months, to $22B
Data
| Valuation | |
|---|---|
| Jan 2025 Series C | $3.3B |
| Sep 2025 tender | $6.6B |
| Feb 2026 Series D | $11B |
| Sep 2026 tender | $22B |
Both charge $99 a month, for opposite things
ElevenLabs'~$3.3B — ElevenLabs, private, latest valuation ~$3.3B $99 Pro plan sells 600,000 credits of generated speech, with voice cloning bundled from its $22 Creator tier 7. HeyGen inverted the sticker: the model is free, and the only paid voice item is a $99-a-month Professional Voice Clone, trained on 30 minutes to three hours of the owner's consented speech 2. Pressed on his own forecast that audio models would commoditize, Staniszewski now expects the quality gap to shrink over three to five years 6. His rival just priced the shrink in.
The growth is real, the No. 1 claim is not
ElevenLabs added $250 million of run rate in nine months, from $350 million at the end of 2025 95, and its agents handle 15 million conversations a week, triple February 4. HeyGen grew from $35 million of ARR in June 2024 to a claimed $200 million 103; both figures are unaudited run rates. The No. 1 claim did not reproduce on the leaderboard on October 10: Artificial Analysis ranks Eleven v4 Turbo first at Elo 1327, and HeyGen Voice is not among its 27 listed models 8. The board's controlled-voice variant would not load.
Nine months, $250M of added ARR at ElevenLabs
Data
| ARR | |
|---|---|
| End 2025 | $350M |
| Q1 2026 | $450M |
| May 2026 | $500M |
| Sep 2026 | $600M |
Free voice does not answer Klarna's phones
The giveaway is a consumer wedge, not an enterprise substitute. ElevenAgents revenue has more than tripled since February, and ElevenLabs runs Klarna's first-line phone support for 35 million US customers 46. HeyGen's own accounting wobbled with the launch: "over 40 million users" on October 9 2, "over 30 million people" the day before 1, with no explanation. Identity is also the sharper liability; researchers list HeyGen among the most-used deepfake tools 10.
Watch the conversion, the clock and the board
The next signals: whether free voice converts into $99 identities and annual deals like Serhant's; whether an IPO "in the next years" 6 lands before Staniszewski's commoditization clock does; and whether HeyGen Voice holds a rank anyone can verify. Both companies charge $99 a month. One sells speech; the other sells you.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
