ElevenLabs, one of the more popular startups working in the field AI audio, said Thursday that it has raised a Series C round of $180 million, valuing the company at $3.3 billion post-money. a16z and ICONIQ Growth are co-leading investment.

ElevenLabs said on Thursday it has raised $180 million in a new funding round that triples the voice cloning artificial intelligence startup's valuation to $3.3 billion. The Series C funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq Growth,

ElevenLabs, a startup that uses artificial intelligence software to replicate voices, has raised $180 million in a new round of funding that values the company at $3.3 billion, tripling what it was worth a year earlier.

Entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, known for co-writing Mosaic, one of the world’s first web browsers, wrote Sunday on X that “DeepSeek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” likening it to the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and the event that forced the U.S. to realize that its technological abilities were not unassailable.

DeepSeek’s AI breakthrough challenges Big Tech with a cheaper, efficient model. This may be bad for the incumbents, but good for everybody else.