AI music-making platforms are in a race for supremacy – and now the world’s most valuable company is backing a key player in this space.
In August, London and New York-headquartered AI audio startup ElevenLabs launched Eleven Music – a rival to Suno and Udio – marking its expansion beyond voice synthesis into full AI music generation.
Unlike Suno and Udio, however, Eleven Music has already inked licensing agreements with prominent rightsholders, including Merlin and a potentially precedent-setting deal with publisher Kobalt.
Now, AI unicorn ElevenLabs has secured strategic investment from chip maker NVIDIA, the world’s most valuable company by market cap, worth around $4.4 trillion as of Tuesday morning (September 23).
(NVIDIA has also just this week confirmed to be investing up to $100 billion in ChatGPT maker OpenAI.)
The new investment from NVIDIA (value undisclosed) was confirmed by ElevenLabs co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski today.
Eleven Labs previously raised a $180 million Series C funding round in January 2025, valuing it at $3.3 billion. Earlier this month, ElevenLabs launched a $100 million tender offer at a valuation of $6.6 billion to give its employees “an opportunity for liquidity”.
The tender was led by existing investors Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from others, including a16z, Smash Capital, World Innovation Lab, and “a number of other insiders”.
In a LinkedIn post sharing a video of a recent meeting with NVIDIA’s founder and CEO Jensen Huang, ElevenLabs’s Staniszewski wrote: “We’re excited to share that NVIDIA is investing in ElevenLabs, with Jensen Huang’s support.”
ElevenLabs’ video noted that it had previously partnered with NVIDIA in its “earliest days.”
Huang is also a long-time fan of ElevenLabs’ tech. This summer, he used an AI voice to narrate several chapters of his Computex keynote in both English and Mandarin.
According to ElevenLabs, he was “able to create the AI voice on ElevenLabs in under an hour with just seven minutes of recorded audio”.
“Whenever my voice is delivered digitally using artificial intelligence, it’s the ElevenLabs platform that I’m using.”
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA
“Whenever my voice is delivered digitally using artificial intelligence, it’s the ElevenLabs platform that I’m using,” said Huang in the latest video shared by Staniszewski.
He added: “Speech to text is just technology, right? Text to Speech is artistry; that craft that goes into a product that gets integrated with technology, and you guys are doing this at scale.”
News of the investment into ElevenLabs arrives a week after NVIDIA unveiled a lengthy list of UK-based partners during Jensen Huang’s visit to the country.
“We’re excited to share that NVIDIA is investing in ElevenLabs, with Jensen Huang’s support.”
Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs was identified by NVIDIA as one of its UK-based partners, noting in a blog post that ElevenLabs “develops AI voice technology that generates natural, ultrarealistic speech in over 70 languages using NVIDIA software and NVIDIA DGX B200 systems”.
NVIDIA added: “Its models power real-time conversational agents, localization, storytelling and accessibility tools for people who have lost their voices, in addition to voicing audiobooks and animating video game characters.”
ElevenLabs confirmed last week that it “has worked closely with NVIDIA in the UK and globally” and that “NVIDIA’s support has helped the company build faster and ship stronger products”.
Jensen Huang’s visit to the UK coincided with US President Donald Trump’s State visit to the UK, during which US firms committed to a £150 billion investment in the UK’s tech sector.
“Last week’s US state visit to the UK strengthened AI partnerships between the two countries and brought major new investments from American companies into the UK tech ecosystem,” wrote ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski in his LinkedIn post.
“With our company’s roots growing deeper in both places, we couldn’t be more optimistic about the road ahead.”
In Staniszewski’s video of his meeting with Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s boss tells ElevenLabs’ Co-founder to “take advantage of everything that NVIDIA has to offer”.
Huang added: ‘If there are any places in the world that you like to go to, but can’t, let us know. If there’s a company you want to get to that you’re not in [with] yet, let me know. We’ll just kind of get you everywhere.”
ElevenLabs launched publicly in January 2023.
The NVIDIA investment in ElevenLabs arrives as the latter company scales its UK and US operations. According to ElevenLabs, over the past year, its UK headcount grew from 18 to 68 and its US headcount from 10 to 61, while the company’s European workforce expanded from 25 to 91.
ElevenLabs has offices in New York, San Francisco, Warsaw, Bangalore, Tokyo, and London.
In December 2024, it announced a partnership with BMG’s parent company Bertelsmann, which included plans to add AI-generated music features.
ElevenLabs has also recently signed a training pact with SourceAudio, giving it access to millions of pre-cleared songs for AI training through SourceAudio’s dataset licensing program.
ElevenLabs’ proactive approach to music licensing currently stands in contrast to competitors Suno and Udio, both of which are facing lawsuits from major record labels over alleged copyright infringement in their training data.
While industry rumors suggest some major music companies are in licensing discussions with Suno and/or Udio, no official agreements have been confirmed to date.Music Business Worldwide
