If France has its AI champion in Mistral, the same can be said of the United Kingdom with ElevenLabs. The London-based startup, known for its AI-powered voice tools, has just reached a $22 billion valuation after closing a $300 million employee secondary sale. The company had been valued at $11 billion since a $500 million Series D funding round in February.

More specifically, the secondary sale was led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price. Existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed and Iconiq also participated in the transaction, alongside new investors including EQT and Goldman Sachs. Unlike a traditional funding round, a secondary sale allows employees and existing shareholders to sell their shares to investors, providing liquidity without the need to raise new capital.

As a reminder, ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski. The London-based company quickly became a leading name in Europe and beyond with its text-to-speech tools. It says its in-house AI models can speak, listen and translate in more than 90 languages spoken by more than 5.5 billion people, or nearly two-thirds of humanity.

ElevenLabs plans to use the newly raised capital to accelerate its growth. The company says its agents now handle more than 15 million conversations per week, three times as many as in February, performing tasks such as processing refunds, renewing insurance policies and scheduling appointments.

ElevenLabs counts Stripe, Deutsche Telekom and the Ukrainian government among its customers. The British startup, which has more than 800 employees, says businesses now account for 55% of its revenue. “AI should interact with people in the same way that we interact with one another,” says Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs. “Achieving this milestone will contribute to the widespread adoption of AI across the economy and enable everyone to shape and benefit from it, regardless of their technical skills. We are already seeing rapid adoption of expressive voice agents by businesses and governments, which are deploying them to serve consumers and citizens,” he adds. ElevenLabs is one of Europe’s leading AI companies, alongside France’s Mistral ($24 billion valuation) and Lovable ($13.3 billion).