Mati Staniszewski

Mati Staniszewski grew up in Poland. In a 2023 interview he recalled being born in a small town near Warsaw and later moving to Warsaw for high school, where he met his future co-founder Piotr Dąbkowski. He then studied mathematics at Imperial College London.⁠[1][2]

At university he and Nikita Devyataykin founded Mathscon, aiming to bring mathematics beyond the classroom to students. He recalled organizing a team of about 20 people and arranging talks, workshops, and an event with about 300 attendees; Mathscon lists integration, inspiration, and innovation as its aims.⁠[1][3]

According to his early interviews, Mati Staniszewski worked successively at Opera Software, BlackRock, and Palantir. At Palantir he held a deployment strategy role, taking part in product implementations for enterprises and the public sector. He later said that this experience of working directly with customers, identifying problems, and turning them into products helped him understand entrepreneurship.⁠[1][2][4]

Outside work, he and Piotr experimented with projects in optimizers, recommendation algorithms, and speech technology, moving gradually from accent detection to automated dubbing. The two linked this direction to their dissatisfaction with the dubbing of foreign films watched in Poland, hoping to let content be understood by more people in different languages and voices.⁠[1][5]

In April 2022, Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski founded ElevenLabs, serving as chief executive officer and chief technology officer respectively. The team developed audio AI models in 2022 and launched a public beta platform in January 2023.⁠[5]

On June 20, 2023, ElevenLabs announced a $19 million Series A round led by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry. The company also introduced a long-form audio production tool and the AI Speech Classifier, which determines whether audio was generated by ElevenLabs; Mati listed lowering language barriers and the responsible use of voice technology together as development goals.⁠[5]

In a 2026 report, ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry recounted that in 2022 Mati Staniszewski and his high school classmate Piotr Dąbkowski left Palantir and Google respectively and pooled their personal savings to found ElevenLabs. Their earlier dissatisfaction with the dubbing of foreign films was one of the motivations for choosing voice AI.⁠[6]

On January 22, 2024, ElevenLabs announced an $80 million Series B round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross. The company introduced Dubbing Studio, the Voice Library voice marketplace, and a preview of a mobile reader app, extending its business from speech synthesis into dubbing, publishing, and interactive voice.⁠[7]

The announcement also explained that the Voice Library lets users share verified copies of their own voices and earn payment when others use them; the company listed voice verification, moderation, and human approval as related safeguards. These are product mechanisms disclosed by the company.⁠[7]

On January 30, 2025, ElevenLabs announced a $180 million Series C round co-led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth at a valuation of $3.3 billion. The announcement said the company had raised a total of $281 million since its founding in 2022 and would use the funds for voice research, product development, and safety capabilities.⁠[8]

In the same period the company introduced products including Conversational AI voice agents, ElevenReader, sound effects generation, and multilingual dubbing, and supported organizations in accessibility, education, and culture through its Impact Program. Mati said he hoped to make voice a natural way for people to interact with digital tools.⁠[8]

On May 13, 2025, the board of Klarna Group PLC appointed Mati Staniszewski as a director, announcing it publicly on May 23. In the announcement Mati said he would support Klarna in expanding the use of AI in its business and user experience.⁠[9]

In August 2025, Mati Staniszewski was named to TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry’s TIME100 AI list. The magazine’s profile focused on ElevenLabs’ creative audio, enterprise voice interaction, and voice licensing businesses, and disclosed that TIME has a technology partnership with ElevenLabs.⁠[10]

In a Sequoia CapitalSequoia CapitalSequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972, investing from the seed stage through the growth stage. Its historical investments include Apple, Cisco, Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and Stripe; in 2021 it introduced the Sequoia Capital Fund structure, which can continue to hold public securities, and in 2023 its regional businesses became independent brands and partnerships.Open the full entry interview released in December 2025, Mati and Lovable co-founder Anton Osika discussed scaling companies. Mati explained that ElevenLabs uses many small teams, combining experienced managers with internally grown talent; teams coordinate their work quarterly, while fundamental research does not have the same fixed delivery deadlines. He stressed that empowering teams and staying close to product details have to go hand in hand.⁠[4]

He also said that talent from Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe, is an important foundation for the company, and that targeting global markets is an important condition for startups there. On the pace of work, he described the team as maintaining a high level of availability and acknowledged that this culture leads some candidates to decide not to join; he also emphasized trust and long-term collaboration between co-founders.⁠[4]

On February 4, 2026, ElevenLabs announced a $500 million Series D round led by Sequoia Capital, raising its valuation to $11 billion and its total funding to $781 million. The company said it would continue developing foundational audio models and products in parallel, including enterprise voice agents, creative tools, and developer interfaces.⁠[11]

In May 2026, the company announced that it had passed $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) within the first four months of the year, and named a new group of institutional and individual investors participating in the Series D round. ARR is an annualized measure based on recurring revenue and cannot be equated with full-year revenue already realized. The same announcement also described a $100 million employee share tender and 530 employees spread across 50 countries; these figures are as disclosed by the company.⁠[12]

In September 2026, the AI customer relationship management company Lightfield completed a $47 million Series A round led by a16z, with Mati Staniszewski listed as one of its individual investors; the amount of his personal investment was not disclosed.⁠[13]

On September 16, Mati introduced ElevenAgents Reception for small businesses on his X account, saying it can handle incoming calls, bookings, and confirmations and can be configured using information from a business’s website.⁠[14]

On September 30, 2026, ElevenLabs announced that it had completed a $300 million employee share tender, reaching a valuation of $22 billion, double the valuation of the February Series D round. In the announcement, Mati Staniszewski said the company wanted employees to share in part of the value they create for customers and society as it grows.⁠[15]

A Forbes report on October 2 estimated that Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski each hold about 15% of ElevenLabs and that, at the company’s $22 billion valuation, each is worth about $3.3 billion. This figure is a media estimate based on shareholdings and a private company valuation and cannot be equated with cash the two have received.⁠[6]

X: Mati Staniszewski’s public account is @mati, at https://x.com/mati (opens in a new window).⁠[16]