Why Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria and Matthew McConaughey are investing in ElevenLabs

Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria, Matthew McConaughey and Hwang Dong-hyuk are joining the capital of ElevenLabs alongside BlackRock, NVIDIA and Wellington Management as part of an extension of the Series D round we reported on last February. Through this investment, these figures from the entertainment industry are taking positions in a technology that could redefine how audiovisual content is produced, dubbed, distributed and consumed worldwide.

The startup develops artificial intelligence models capable of generating realistic synthetic voices, cloning human voices, translating and dubbing audiovisual content, while also powering conversational agents deployed within enterprises.

The company’s technological core relies on proprietary text-to-speech and speech-to-speech models capable of reproducing nuances that are particularly difficult to simulate: breathing, rhythm, hesitation, emotions and variations in intonation. The challenge is no longer simply to produce a “credible” voice, but to make conversations natural enough to replace certain repetitive human interactions.

This evolution is naturally attracting the attention of the entertainment industry. Streaming platforms and studios have spent years seeking to reduce the time and cost associated with content localization. The dubbing technologies developed by ElevenLabs now make it possible to generate multilingual versions capable of preserving some of the original vocal characteristics of actors.

In a market where content is distributed globally almost instantly, this capability is becoming strategic. The international success of non-English productions such as Squid Game has accelerated this transformation. Platforms are now seeking to industrialize dubbing and linguistic adaptation without multiplying traditional post-production cycles.

ElevenLabs is also developing tools for enterprises to automate voice interactions across customer support, sales, recruitment and marketing operations. The company states that recent business growth has primarily been driven by the deployment of these conversational voice agents.

This evolution is gradually positioning ElevenLabs less as a creative generative AI company and more as a software infrastructure provider. Voice is becoming an operational interface enabling businesses to automate entire conversations with customers and users.

ElevenLabs announced that it surpassed 500 million dollars in annual recurring revenue during the first quarter of 2026, up from 350 million dollars at the end of 2025.

Alongside Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria and Hwang Dong-hyuk, who are joining Matthew McConaughey as investors in the company, investment firms including BlackRock, Wellington Management, D. E. Shaw & Co., Schroders, Santander and NVentures, NVIDIA’s investment vehicle, are also participating in this extension of the Series D round. The transaction brings the company’s total funding to more than 550 million dollars at an 11 billion dollar valuation.

Founded in London in 2022 by Polish entrepreneurs Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, ElevenLabs is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. With this new transaction, the company has now raised more than 660 million euros since inception and stands among the highest-valued artificial intelligence startups in Europe.