Is ElevenLabs a good company to work for in 2026? A verified read

Eleven Labs Inc. is a private AI audio research and product company with three platforms, ElevenAgents, ElevenCreative and ElevenAPI, and four main offices in London, New York, San Francisco and Warsaw (ElevenLabs). It stated on May 5, 2026 that it had surpassed $500 million in ARR in the first four months of the year, after ending 2025 at $350 million (ElevenLabs), and on September 8, 2026 that large organizations account for 55% of revenue, up from 40% a year earlier, that it is a global team of 800 people, and that its agents handle over 15 million conversations a week across models supporting more than 90 languages (ElevenLabs). It said on February 12, 2026 that ElevenAgents powers over three million deployed voice agents and that employees at more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies use its technology (ElevenLabs), and on May 22, 2026 that voice creators on its Voice Library had earned over $22 million, with more than 10,400 creators earning on the platform (ElevenLabs). The two newest commitments on the record are the September 10, 2026 agreement with Universal Music Group (Universal Music Group) and the £9 million UK "Gov Voice" contract awarded on September 7 (UK Find a Tender Service).

The record does not say. ElevenLabs discloses no profit, margin, cash or burn figure in its newsroom posts, and it has no financial statements on file with the SEC (ElevenLabs; SEC EDGAR). What it does state is scale: $350 million in ARR at the end of 2025, a figure its February 4, 2026 post had put at over $330 million, and more than $500 million by May 5, 2026 (ElevenLabs). Its only Form D on EDGAR is the May 2023 filing for the Series A, so there is no later filing to read a number out of (SEC EDGAR).

The growth is on the record, and so is the turnover at the top of the revenue organization. The company said on May 5, 2026 that it had surpassed $500 million in ARR in four months (ElevenLabs), and its job board listed 246 openings on September 14, 2026, 95 of them in Revenue (ElevenLabs careers). It committed in June 2026 to hiring 173 people across California under the California Competes Tax Credit program (ElevenLabs) and to doubling UK headcount to 200 in a new London headquarters three times the size of the old one (ElevenLabs). Against that: a chief revenue officer started on September 2 (ElevenLabs) and a chief financial officer on September 8 (ElevenLabs), weeks after the first go-to-market leader wrote on August 4 that he was leaving within two weeks (SaaStr).

The dated prices are below; the return is not on the record. The last announced valuation is the $11 billion Series D of February 4, 2026 (ElevenLabs), and the liquidity on record is two employee tenders: $100 million at a $6.6 billion valuation on September 8, 2025 (ElevenLabs) and a second $100 million tender the company said it had closed on May 5, 2026, with no valuation stated (ElevenLabs). Bloomberg reported on July 2, 2026, citing people familiar with the matter, that ElevenLabs was in early talks with investors on a secondary share sale that would value the company at about $22 billion, expected by September, with terms preliminary; ElevenLabs declined to comment, and as of September 14, 2026 the company had announced no such transaction (Bloomberg). Three managers carried the stock in their own June 30, 2026 filings at three different prices: Robinhood Ventures Fund I at $54.18 a share on the Series D-1 preferred (SEC EDGAR), Innovation Access Fund at $60.55 to $60.67 a share on lots its filing labels "Private Equity" (SEC EDGAR), and Hartford Schroders Private Opportunities Fund at $75.85 a share on its Series D-1, A-4 and B-1 preferred, up from $54.18 at March 31 (SEC EDGAR). Each is that manager's own opinion of record rather than a market price. Notice's algorithmic estimate as of September 14, 2026 put the company at an implied $17.33 billion, 58% above its last announced round, a figure Notice says is built from secondary-market and reference data and is not intended to reflect an active market (Notice). The company has filed no Form D since May 2023 (SEC EDGAR).

Nothing is on file, and the chief executive has given a horizon. He told Bloomberg in an interview published March 9, 2026 that the company aims to be ready for a public listing within two to three years, and said in the same interview that "a dual listing in Warsaw is what we are thinking about"; the company has announced no listing plan as of September 14, 2026 (Bloomberg). He also wrote in the February 4, 2026 Series D post that the company builds "toward IPO and beyond" (ElevenLabs), and no registration statement by Eleven Labs Inc. appears on EDGAR as of September 14, 2026 (SEC EDGAR). Its only EDGAR filing of any kind is the May 2023 Form D for the Series A (SEC EDGAR). The liquidity on the record is the two employee tenders, the second of which the company said it closed on May 5, 2026 (ElevenLabs).

Not on the record. No layoff, reduction in force or hiring freeze appears in the company's newsroom, in TechCrunch's 2025 layoffs list, in Sifted's coverage or in tier-1 press from January 2025 through September 14, 2026 (TechCrunch; Sifted). Its own posts run the other way: over 330 employees in September 2025, 530 across more than 50 countries in May 2026, and 800 on September 8, 2026 (ElevenLabs). The job board listed 246 open roles on September 14, 2026 (ElevenLabs careers), and the published expansion plans are California (ElevenLabs), the UK (ElevenLabs) and the Warsaw R&D center announced in January 2025 (ElevenLabs).

Mati Staniszewski, a cofounder, is chief executive officer, and the press page names the other cofounder, Piotr Dąbkowski, as chief technology officer (ElevenLabs). Ashley Kramer joined as chief revenue officer on September 2, 2026, after leading enterprise sales at OpenAI (ElevenLabs), and Ethan Tandowsky as chief financial officer on September 8, 2026, from Adyen, where he had been CFO since 2023 (ElevenLabs). Alex Holt, who joined in 2023 as one of the first ten employees, was named Field CTO on June 8, 2026, leading core engineering and forward deployed engineering from London (ElevenLabs), and Sequoia partner Andrew Reed joined the board with the February 2026 Series D (ElevenLabs). Carles Reina, the fourth employee and first go-to-market leader, wrote on August 4, 2026 that he was leaving within two weeks (SaaStr). The chief executive said in September 2025 that he and his cofounder still interview every hire and that the company runs on about 20 teams of five to ten people, each owning a product area (Business Insider).

Several sit in the dated record. A proposed Illinois biometric-privacy class action was filed on May 11, 2026, one of nine in Chicago's federal court that week, alleging that voiceprints were collected to train voice models without the notice and consent state law requires; ElevenLabs did not respond to the Chicago Sun-Times (court docket). On April 16, 2026 Senator Maggie Hassan asked the company and three other voice-cloning firms how they prevent scammers from misusing their tools, and a spokesperson pointed Axios to the company's safeguards (Joint Economic Committee). An earlier voice-actor suit in Delaware, Vacker v. Eleven Labs, Inc., settled on confidential terms in August 2025 and was dismissed with prejudice on November 6, 2025 on the parties' stipulation (court docket), and a patent-infringement complaint, BTF IP Holdings LLC v. Eleven Labs Inc., was filed in the Southern District of New York on September 1, 2026, with no press coverage or company statement as of September 14 (court docket). Beside the litigation: the first go-to-market leader left in August (SaaStr), the three fund marks on the stock range from $54.18 to $75.85 a share at the same date (SEC EDGAR), and the company discloses no profit, margin, cash or burn figure (ElevenLabs).

Candidate-reported, not company-verified: candidates describe a five-stage engineering loop over three to five weeks, a recruiter screen, a timed asynchronous coding screen of about 90 minutes, a project deep-dive, a practical coding round built on a customer scenario, and a product-decomposition round in place of system design, with forward-deployed-engineer loops ending in a founder or CTO conversation (Exponent; techinterview.org). What the company says itself: its chief executive said in September 2025 that he and his cofounder interview every hire (Business Insider), and its then head of go-to-market said in April 2026 that a sales hire's annual quota is twenty times base salary, a $100,000 salary carrying a $2 million quota (TNW). On the work model, the careers FAQ answers that the setup is hybrid with main offices in London, New York, San Francisco and Warsaw, and the careers page says the team spans more than 50 countries and lists asynchronous collaboration that minimizes meetings among what it offers (ElevenLabs). The February 4, 2026 Series D post names fourteen cities where it is expanding with locally embedded go-to-market teams, from London and New York to Tokyo, Bengaluru, São Paulo and Mexico City (ElevenLabs).