--- title: "HeyGen gives its voice model away free, charges $99 a month to clone yours; ElevenLabs valued at $22 billion" description: "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." publisher: "The Inference" section: "Platforms" published: 2026-10-10T19:06:38.815Z modified: 2026-10-10T19:06:38.815Z canonical: https://theinference.org/article/heygen-gives-its-voice-model-away-free-charges-99-a-month-to-clone-yours-elevenlabs-valued-at-22-billion language: en keywords: "Voice AI, AI Video, Startups, Valuation, Pricing" --- # 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. ## 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](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/heygen) avatar and cloned voice, [every post labeled as AI](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ryan-serhant-partners-with-heygen-to-turn-his-own-face-and-voice-into-a-daily-content-engine-302901785.html) [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](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/heygen-launches-heygen-voice-debuting-at-1-on-artificial-analysis-leaderboard-302903718.html) [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](https://elevenlabs.io/blog/tender-22bn), double February's Series D, with existing investors and employees selling [4][5]. 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 [2][3][10]. *Chart: **ElevenLabs' valuation doubled twice in 20 months, to $22B** Column chart of ElevenLabs valuations: $3.3B January 2025, $6.6B September 2025, $11B February 2026, $22B September 2026, the last highlighted* *Company-announced primary and secondary marks; Series C valuation as reported by TechCrunch. Sources: About Chromebooks compilation of ElevenLabs disclosures, Billboard, ElevenLabs. [9][5][4]* ## Both charge $99 a month, for opposite things [ElevenLabs](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/elevenlabs)' [$99 Pro plan sells 600,000 credits of generated speech](https://elevenlabs.io/pricing), 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 [9][5], 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 [10][3]; 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](https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-speech), and HeyGen Voice is not among its 27 listed models [8]. The board's controlled-voice variant would not load. *Chart: **Nine months, $250M of added ARR at ElevenLabs** Line chart of ElevenLabs ARR: $350M end 2025, $450M Q1 2026, $500M May 2026, $600M September 2026* *Company-claimed annual recurring revenue, unaudited run rates, from ElevenLabs disclosures and CEO statements. Sources: About Chromebooks, Billboard, TechCrunch. [9][5][6]* ## 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](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/24/twenty-minutes-with-the-ceo-of-elevenlabs-now-reportedly-valued-at-22-billion/) [4][6]. 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. ## Takeaway HeyGen's free launch of HeyGen Voice prices in ElevenLabs chief executive Mati Staniszewski's own forecast that audio quality commoditizes within three to five years, but the $22 billion rival sells enterprise agents Klarna runs its phones on, and the No. 1 claim behind the giveaway does not yet show on the leaderboard. ## Sources 1. [PRNewswire, Ryan Serhant Partners with HeyGen to Turn His Own Face and Voice Into a Daily Content Engine, 8 October 2026](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ryan-serhant-partners-with-heygen-to-turn-his-own-face-and-voice-into-a-daily-content-engine-302901785.html) 2. [PRNewswire, HeyGen Launches HeyGen Voice, Debuting at #1 on Artificial Analysis' Leaderboard, 9 October 2026](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/heygen-launches-heygen-voice-debuting-at-1-on-artificial-analysis-leaderboard-302903718.html) 3. [HeyGen homepage updates, HeyGen doubles to $200M ARR in eight months, 25 June 2026 (accessed 10 October 2026)](https://www.heygen.com/) 4. [ElevenLabs blog, ElevenLabs valuation increases to $22 billion fueled by enterprise demand for conversational agents, 30 September 2026](https://elevenlabs.io/blog/tender-22bn) 5. [Billboard Pro, ElevenLabs Valued at $22 Billion After Tender Offer, 30 September 2026](https://www.billboard.com/pro/elevenlabs-ai-startup-valued-22-billion-tender-offer/) 6. [TechCrunch, ElevenLabs' CEO on margins, IPO timing, and telling customers they're talking to a bot, 24 September 2026](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/24/twenty-minutes-with-the-ceo-of-elevenlabs-now-reportedly-valued-at-22-billion/) 7. [ElevenLabs pricing page (accessed 10 October 2026)](https://elevenlabs.io/pricing) 8. [Artificial Analysis, Text-to-Speech (Provider Voice) leaderboard (accessed 10 October 2026)](https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-speech) 9. [About Chromebooks, ElevenLabs Statistics 2026 (accessed 10 October 2026)](https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/elevenlabs-statistics/) 10. [Wikipedia, HeyGen (accessed 10 October 2026)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeyGen) --- HeyGen gives its voice model away free, charges $99 a month to clone yours; ElevenLabs valued at $22 billion — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/heygen-gives-its-voice-model-away-free-charges-99-a-month-to-clone-yours-elevenlabs-valued-at-22-billion