ElevenLabs' Mati Staniszewski: How Voice Becomes the Interface for Everything

About this episode

Mati Staniszewski discusses ElevenLabs' journey in audio AI and the future of voice as an interface.

Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, joins Sequoia partner Andrew Reed at AI Ascent 2026 to talk about how a four-year-old company built a frontier audio AI business with just over 400 people and over $400M in revenue. He explains why audio was overlooked in 2022 when the rest of AI was chasing text and images, why ElevenLabs chose to monetize from day one rather than raise indefinitely, and why he believes voice will be the primary interface for agents, robots, and the next generation of computing. Also: why emotional intelligence is the next frontier in voice, and what happens when one voice agent realizes it's talking to another.

People in this episode

Host: Andrew Reed

Guest: Mati Staniszewski

Topics covered

• audio AI
• voice interface
• emotional intelligence
• technology trends
• business strategy

Keywords

• audio AI
• voice interface
• ElevenLabs
• emotional intelligence
• technology
• business strategy
• AI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ElevenLabs, Sequoia Capital

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