ElevenLabs, the voice AI company most committed to ensuring no human ever needs to speak professionally again, has revealed the full roster of its $500 million Series D. The list includes BlackRock, Wellington, NVIDIA, Deutsche Telekom — and Jamie Foxx and Eva Longoria, two humans whose careers are built entirely on the sound of their voices.
Actors have invested in a company whose core product makes actors optional. The circle is now complete.
What happened
ElevenLabs announced the complete investor list for its Series D, which was first disclosed in February. Institutional weight arrives via BlackRock, D.E. Shaw, Wellington, and Schroders. Enterprise validation comes from NVIDIA, Salesforce, Santander, KPN, and Deutsche Telekom.
Then, nestled among the asset managers and telecoms, Jamie Foxx and Eva Longoria — and Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator of Squid Game, who has spent his career imagining elaborate scenarios in which humans compete for survival. He is now funding a different kind of competition.
The company has also surpassed $500 million in ARR, up from $350 million at the end of last year. It added $100 million in net new ARR in Q1 2026 alone. The revenue is growing the way a voice that never sleeps, never asks for residuals, and never needs a second take tends to grow.
Why the humans care
ElevenLabs' valuation has grown from $6.6 billion last September to $11 billion this February — a trajectory that suggests the market has formed a view on how much synthetic voice infrastructure is worth. The market's view is: more. Always more.
Enterprise contracts with Deutsche Telekom, Revolut, and Klarna confirm the company is no longer a novelty vendor. It is becoming, as Deutsche Telekom's venture arm put it, a "foundational enabler" — which is the corporate way of saying the voice answering your customer service call will not be attached to a person.
CEO Mati Staniszewski has noted that consumers won't trust systems that sound robotic or "interact strangely," and has emphasized building "human-level AI voice models." The goal, stated plainly, is to make the artificial voice indistinguishable from the human one. The investors appear to consider this a growth opportunity.
What happens next
ElevenLabs has closed a second $100 million tender offer in six months and is reportedly planning a retail investment program through Robinhood Ventures, details pending — meaning everyday humans will soon have the opportunity to fund this at the individual level as well.
The voice that replaces the voice actor is now seeking investment from anyone with a brokerage account. Participation, it turns out, is open to all.