Oct 6 (Reuters) - London-based AI voice company ElevenLabs plans to invest "hundreds of millions of dollars" in India, its co-founder Mati Staniszewski told Reuters on Tuesday.
Global AI firms have deepened their India bets over the past year, with OpenAI and Anthropic opening their first India offices and expanding local partnerships.
The push coincides with multibillion-dollar commitments from Amazon, Microsoft and Google to build AI, cloud and data center infrastructure in a market increasingly viewed as critical to global AI growth.
Nvidia-backed Elevenlabs, which doubled its valuation from February to $22 billion in September, is open to making acquisitions in India, Staniszewski added, but declined to disclose any names.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs' AI voice technology can convert text into speech and perform tasks such as processing refunds, renewing insurance policies and booking appointments.
Its customers in India include edtech company Physicswallah, electrical equipment maker Havells and fintech Razorpay.
The investment would be used to add local teams, develop models and work on Indian languages. The company declined to mention the exact investment amount. CNBC TV18 first reported the development.
The company also said that it would partner with the southern state of Karnataka to use voice AI to make government services more accessible to citizens and AI-powered voice restoration to support people without the ability to speak.
Besides Nvidia, its backers include Wellington, T. Rowe Price, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed, EQT and Goldman Sachs.
Karthik Rajaram, general manager and country leader for India, said Elevenlabs has worked with 250 enterprises in the region, with 100 million annual AI-agent conversations across 14 Indian languages, a rapidly growing developer ecosystem, and an expanding library of Indian voices driving adoption.
"So what's striking is that it is not just only the size of the opportunity that we have in the country. It is the sheer breadth and complexity of the market that we have."
Reporting by Abhirami G and Jaspreet Singh; Writing by Aishwarya Jain in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo
Source: Reuters