TL;DR: ElevenLabs News, October 2026: Amsterdam Office Launch and What It Means for Founders
ElevenLabs news, October, 2026: the voice AI giant opened an Amsterdam office, and you can beat slow Dutch corporations to a native-sounding voice channel. Violetta Bonenkamp (Mean CEO), a linguist and serial founder in the Dutch startup ecosystem, explains the numbers and gives a practical playbook.
- What happened: ElevenLabs Netherlands launched on October 1, 2026, led by Goswijn Thijssen. The company plans to triple its Dutch team this year. Dutch customers in telecom, food delivery, healthcare and media have already generated 200 million+ audio clips with 100 Dutch voices.
- Why it matters: The valuation grew from $100 million in 2023 to $22 billion in 2026, with $500 million+ in annual recurring revenue. Local offices win over skeptical European buyers who ask about GDPR and data storage before features. Compare these figures with other players in our AI voice startup statistics.
- What you can do now:
- Pick one repetitive call, such as opening hours or delivery status.
- Test several Dutch voices on the free tier with native speakers.
- Add a human handoff and tell callers they are talking to an AI.
- Get written consent before cloning any voice.
- Scale only after 30 days of real call data.
- The founder lesson: ElevenLabs proved Dutch demand before opening an office. Validate with cheap no-code tools first, then invest in local presence.
Working on a tight budget? Compare these free ElevenLabs alternatives and run your first voice script this week.
Check out other fresh startup news and trends that you might like:
Starlink News | October, 2026 (STARTUP EDITION)
The biggest ElevenLabs news of October 2026 lands right in my backyard: on October 1, the voice AI company officially launched ElevenLabs Netherlands and opened an office in Amsterdam. I am Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as Mean CEO. I have built deeptech and edtech companies in the Dutch startup ecosystem, through programs like Yes!Delft, TU/e Launch and Brightlands, and I hold degrees in linguistics, bilingualism and business. When a company valued at $22 billion plants a flag in a city I know well, in a field where language meets machines, I pay attention. You should too.
This article covers what happened, what the numbers say, and why a voice AI company keeps opening local offices when it could sell software from London. It also gives you a step-by-step guide to using this moment as a founder, freelancer or business owner. Expect some uncomfortable opinions. Education must be experiential and slightly uncomfortable, and so should business analysis.
Let’s break it down.
What happened in ElevenLabs news in October 2026?
ElevenLabs is a software company that builds AI voice technology: text-to-speech (TTS, software that turns written text into spoken audio), speech-to-text, voice cloning, dubbing, and conversational voice agents for businesses. On October 1, 2026, the company announced its Dutch launch across several channels, including the official ElevenLabs announcement on X and the ElevenLabs blog post about the Amsterdam office.
Here is the short version for busy readers:
- Launch date: October 1, 2026.
- Location: a new physical office in Amsterdam.
- Leader: Goswijn Thijssen, appointed as the Netherlands lead.
- Hiring plan: TRIPLE the Dutch team “this year” across go-to-market (GTM, the sales and marketing functions that bring a product to customers), engineering and more.
- Existing customers: some of the largest Dutch companies in telecom, food delivery and healthcare.
- Dutch voice library: 100 Dutch voices on the platform.
- Usage: Dutch customers have already generated over 200 million audio clips.
Cofounder and CEO Mati Staniszewski greeted the country with “Hallo Nederland!” in his LinkedIn post on the ElevenLabs Netherlands launch. The news also spread fast on Digg’s coverage of the ElevenLabs Amsterdam office.
What did ElevenLabs leadership say about the Netherlands?
Two quotes matter, and I want you to read them carefully, because the word choices reveal the sales strategy.
Mati Staniszewski said: “Amsterdam is one of the most multilingual cities on earth, and a natural home for voice AI. We’re already seeing strong demand from Dutch customers across telecoms, healthcare, and media, to name a few, and we’re expanding our local team to build the technology these customers need.”
Goswijn Thijssen added: “The Netherlands has always been a country that connects markets, language and people. Our customers here need voice AI that’s precise, secure, and genuinely helpful. We have 100 Dutch voices currently on our platform and our customers have already generated over 200 million audio clips. We’re delighted to be opening here, close to our customers to help them deploy our technology.”
Notice the words PRECISE and SECURE. Those are enterprise words. They speak to telecom procurement teams and hospital compliance officers, and much less to TikTok creators. The phrase “close to our customers” tells you the real reason for the office: large Dutch companies want a person they can call, meet and blame. Software alone does not close a hospital contract.
Why Amsterdam? A linguist and European founder’s view
My first degree is in linguistics and education, and I later did an advanced master’s in linguistics in Belgium. I have spent years treating language as an interface layer between humans and systems. From that angle, the Netherlands is a fascinating test market for voice AI, and the reasons go beyond the press release.
1. Dutch speakers switch languages constantly
Walk into any Amsterdam office and you will hear Dutch, English, and often a third language in the same meeting. Linguists call this code-switching: moving between languages mid-conversation. A voice agent that handles a customer who starts in Dutch, drops in English tech terms, and finishes with a regional expression is a hard engineering problem. If ElevenLabs can solve it here, it can sell the solution almost anywhere in Europe.
2. Dutch is a “mid-sized” language with big money behind it
Dutch is spoken by roughly 25 million people across the Netherlands and Flanders. That makes it too small for many American AI companies to prioritize, and large enough to support a wealthy, digital-first economy. Smaller language markets are often underserved by voice AI, which means the first company to sound genuinely native wins trust early.
3. The Benelux pairing is deliberate
The ElevenLabs company updates page lists a separate Belgium launch alongside the Netherlands one. The careers page also lists a “B2B Growth Marketer – Benelux” role based in the Netherlands. Put those together and you see a regional play: Dutch voices serve both Amsterdam and Flanders, and one hub can cover Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
4. Dutch buyers are direct and skeptical
I say this with love, having built companies here: Dutch corporate buyers will tell you to your face that your demo is mediocre. They ask about data storage, privacy under the GDPR (the EU General Data Protection Regulation), and contract terms before they ask about features. A local office answers those questions in Dutch, in person, over a coffee in Zuidas. That shortens sales cycles.
What do the numbers behind ElevenLabs tell entrepreneurs?
Numbers make the story real. Here are the figures I found most striking while researching this piece:
- Founded in 2022 by Piotr Dąbkowski (ex-Google machine learning engineer) and Mati Staniszewski (ex-Palantir deployment strategist), both raised in Poland, according to the ElevenLabs Wikipedia entry.
- $2 million pre-seed revealed in January 2023, led by Credo Ventures.
- $19 million Series A in June 2023 at a valuation of about $100 million, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.
- $22 billion valuation in 2026, led by T. Rowe Price and Wellington Management, fueled by enterprise demand for conversational agents.
- Over $500 million ARR (annual recurring revenue, the yearly value of subscription contracts), with new investors including BlackRock, NVIDIA, Jamie Foxx and Eva Longoria.
- 200 million+ audio clips generated by Dutch customers before the office even opened.
- 14 open ElevenLabs jobs in the Netherlands listed on Glassdoor in September 2026, one month before launch.
Here is the shocking part. Going from a $100 million valuation in mid-2023 to $22 billion in 2026 is roughly a 220x increase in about three years. Most European startups I mentor would celebrate a 3x jump between rounds. That pace tells you voice is becoming a default way people interact with businesses, and investors are betting on it with serious money.
The second shocking stat is quieter. 200 million Dutch audio clips with no local office. ElevenLabs proved demand first and invested in physical presence second. That is exactly the sequence I preach to founders: validate with cheap tools, then build infrastructure once the market pulls you in.
How does the Netherlands launch fit ElevenLabs’ 2026 expansion pattern?
The Amsterdam office is one piece of a much larger puzzle. The company’s update feeds show a steady stream of country launches, certifications, partnerships and executive hires:
- Country launches: the Netherlands, Belgium, Singapore and Canada, adding to existing hubs in London, New York, San Francisco and Warsaw.
- Government work: FedRAMP 20x Class A certification (a US federal program that authorizes cloud services for government use) for agents, text-to-speech and speech-to-text, plus an MOU with the UK Government and an investment from Poland.
- US jobs: an expansion in California announced as creating 173 high-paying jobs.
- Product: the launch of Eleven v4, described by the company as its “most emotive model yet.”
- Entertainment: a multi-year strategic agreement with Universal Music Group and an audiobook of The Odyssey narrated by Sir Michael Caine’s AI voice.
- Leadership: Ethan Tandowsky joined as Chief Financial Officer and Ashley Kramer as Chief Revenue Officer.
- Public trust: work on protecting elections and a UK Parliament first, when Baroness Campbell gave an AI-voiced speech using ElevenLabs.
A new CFO, a new CRO, government certifications and a string of local offices. When I see that combination, I read it as a company preparing to prove enterprise revenue at scale. You hire a Chief Revenue Officer when you want sales machinery in every region, and you open local offices because enterprise buyers in Europe rarely sign big contracts with a faraway vendor.
What does “claiming the interaction layer” mean for small businesses?
Dutch tech outlet Techzine framed the launch with a sharp headline in its analysis ElevenLabs wants to claim the interaction layer, calling the company’s ambitions bold. The “interaction layer” is the point where a customer talks to a business: the phone line, the help desk, the in-app assistant, the narrated product video.
Here is why that matters to you. Whoever owns the interaction layer owns the customer conversation, and with it the data about what customers ask, fear and want. If a telecom company routes millions of calls through an AI voice agent, the voice provider becomes part of the brand experience. For a small business, the question becomes simple: do you want your customers’ first impression to come from a generic robot or a voice you deliberately chose and trained?
My honest view: small companies have a window right now. Large Dutch enterprises move slowly through procurement. A five-person e-commerce shop can set up a Dutch-speaking voice agent in a weekend and sound more polished on the phone than a bank that is still running a pilot.
How can entrepreneurs use the ElevenLabs Netherlands launch? A step-by-step guide
My rule is “default to no-code until you hit a hard wall.” I built Fe/male Switch, a full startup game and online incubator, entirely with no-code tools. Voice AI fits the same philosophy. Here is how I would approach it this quarter.
- Map every moment your business speaks. List phone calls, voicemail, onboarding videos, course lessons, podcast intros, product demos and support replies. Mark which ones are repetitive.
- Pick ONE repetitive conversation to test. A good candidate is the call you answer ten times a week with the same answer, such as opening hours, delivery status or booking changes.
- Test the Dutch voices before you commit. Use the free tier of ElevenLabs text-to-speech with lifelike AI voices and run the same script through several of the 100 Dutch voices. Ask three native speakers, ideally one from Flanders, which one sounds trustworthy.
- Write scripts like a linguist. Short sentences, clear verbs, numbers spelled the way people say them. Spoken language follows different rules than written text, so read your script aloud before you generate it.
- Set up a human handoff. Decide the exact trigger phrases (“complaint,” “cancel,” “speak to a person”) that route the caller to a human. This is human-in-the-loop design, and it protects your reputation.
- Measure behavior, skip vanity metrics. Track resolved calls, abandoned calls and how many customers ask for a human. Number of minutes generated tells you nothing about value.
- Check the legal basics. Tell callers they are speaking to an AI, confirm how audio data is stored, and get written consent before cloning any real person’s voice, including your own team members.
- Scale only after 30 days of data. If the test conversation works, add a second use case. If it fails, rewrite the script before blaming the technology.
Which businesses can benefit first? Practical examples
ElevenLabs named telecom, food delivery, healthcare and media as its strongest Dutch sectors. Smaller players in those same sectors, and beyond, can borrow the playbook:
- Local restaurant or dark kitchen: an AI voice line that confirms orders and delivery times in Dutch and English, freeing staff during rush hour.
- Physiotherapy or dental clinic: appointment reminders and rescheduling calls, with a strict handoff to a human for anything medical.
- Online course creator: narrating lessons in Dutch, English and German from one script, tripling the potential audience without hiring three voice actors.
- B2B SaaS startup: localized product demo videos for the Benelux market, produced in an afternoon.
- Freelance translator or copywriter: adding voiceover packages to existing translation work and charging more per project.
- Podcaster or newsletter writer: offering an audio version of every issue, which is exactly what ElevenLabs does with its own blog posts.
- Edtech founder: building role-play characters that talk back to learners. At Fe/male Switch, we think about AI as a game master and tutor, and expressive voice makes that character feel alive.
What mistakes should founders avoid with voice AI?
I have watched founders burn money on shiny tools for twenty years. These are the traps I see most often:
- Cloning voices without consent. Your co-founder’s voice belongs to your co-founder. Get it in writing, including what happens if they leave the company. As someone who works on IP protection at CADChain, I can tell you voice rights disputes are coming, and founders will lose them.
- Hiding the AI. Dutch customers value directness. Pretending a bot is a human destroys trust the moment someone notices.
- Using one “Dutch” voice for everyone. A Randstad accent may sound off to a customer in Limburg or Antwerp. Test with your real audience.
- Automating the emotional calls. Complaints, cancellations and health concerns need a human. Automate the boring calls first.
- Translating written copy word for word into audio. Written marketing text sounds stiff when spoken. Rewrite for the ear.
- Ignoring data storage questions. If you serve healthcare or finance clients, know where the audio is processed and stored before your client’s lawyer asks.
- Building custom tech too early. Do not hire a developer to build your own voice stack in month one. Use the API and no-code connectors until real demand forces your hand.
What are Mean CEO’s deeper takes on this news?
Time for the provocative part. These are my personal opinions as a parallel entrepreneur who builds across deeptech, edtech and AI tooling in Europe.
Take 1: Europe produced this company, and Europe should copy the playbook
Two Polish founders, inspired by badly dubbed American films, built one of the most valuable AI companies in the world, headquartered in London. That should embarrass every European who claims great AI only comes from Silicon Valley. The lesson for founders here: solve a problem you personally feel, especially a LANGUAGE problem, because Europe has dozens of languages and that diversity is a commercial advantage.
Take 2: Local offices are a trust product
Many founders think “go global” means a website in English and a Stripe account. Enterprise Europe works differently. ElevenLabs could have kept selling remotely to Dutch telecoms. It chose to put a Dutch leader, a Dutch team and a physical address in Amsterdam. If your startup sells to large European companies, budget for presence early, even if that presence is one well-connected person.
Take 3: Voice will become the new website
In 2005, businesses without a website looked amateur. By the end of this decade, I expect businesses without a decent voice channel to look the same way. Customers will expect to call any company at 2 a.m. and get a helpful answer in their own language. FOMO is justified here: the founders who set this up in 2026 will collect two or three years of conversation data before their competitors start.
Take 4: Voice rights are the next IP battleground
At CADChain, I spend my days on IP protection for engineering files. Voice is heading toward the same problems: who owns a cloned voice, who can license it, and how you prove an audio clip is authentic. ElevenLabs offers an AI Speech Classifier that detects AI-generated audio, which is a good start. My principle stands: protection and compliance should be invisible, built into tools so creators do the right thing by default. Founders building on voice should design consent and licensing into their product from day one.
Take 5: Women founders should grab this tool first
My view is that women do not need more inspiration; they need infrastructure. Voice AI is infrastructure. A solo female founder running a coaching business can now offer multilingual audio courses, an always-on phone assistant and localized video content without hiring a team or raising capital. That removes one structural barrier, and I want women in our Fe/male Switch community to use it before the market gets crowded.
Should you apply for a job at ElevenLabs Netherlands?
If you are a freelancer or professional considering a move, the timing looks good. ElevenLabs says it has open roles across research, engineering, sales, solutions and other teams, and it plans to triple the Dutch team this year. Glassdoor showed 14 ElevenLabs jobs in the Netherlands in September 2026, and the ElevenLabs open positions page lists roles such as B2B Growth Marketer for the Benelux and Deployment Strategists across several countries.
My advice: joining a fast-growing AI company early in a new country gives you the closest thing to a founder education without founder risk. You will see how a $22 billion company sells, prices and handles enterprise objections. Many of the best founders I know spent two years inside a scaling company before starting their own.
Frequently asked questions about ElevenLabs news in October 2026
When did ElevenLabs open its Amsterdam office?
ElevenLabs officially launched in the Netherlands and announced its Amsterdam office on October 1, 2026.
Who leads ElevenLabs Netherlands?
Goswijn Thijssen leads the Netherlands office and the growing team supporting existing and new Dutch customers.
How many Dutch voices does ElevenLabs offer?
The platform has 100 Dutch voices, and Dutch customers have generated over 200 million audio clips.
Which Dutch industries use ElevenLabs?
The company highlights telecom, food delivery, healthcare and media as sectors with strong Dutch demand.
Is ElevenLabs a European company?
ElevenLabs was founded by two Polish entrepreneurs, is based in London, and is legally incorporated in the US, with offices in cities including New York, San Francisco, Warsaw and now Amsterdam.
What should you do next?
The opening of ElevenLabs Netherlands is a signal about where customer communication is heading in Europe. A voice AI company with $500 million+ in ARR and a $22 billion valuation decided that a multilingual, direct, demanding market like the Netherlands deserves a local team. Large Dutch companies will spend months on procurement. You do not have to.
Next steps for this week:
- Today: list every repetitive conversation in your business.
- This week: test three Dutch or English voices with one real script and ask native speakers for blunt feedback.
- This month: launch one small voice experiment with a clear human handoff and a consent policy.
- This quarter: decide, based on behavior data, whether voice becomes a permanent channel.
Treat this like a strategic game. The goal is to collect information, assets and relationships faster than your competitors, and voice AI just became one of the cheapest ways to do that. Tot ziens, and go test something uncomfortable.
People Also Ask:
What is the best text to speech generator?
ElevenLabs ranks among the top text-to-speech generators because its voices sound natural, carry emotional tone, and adjust pacing based on context. It supports more than 90 languages and has a library of over 10,000 voices. Other popular choices include Google Cloud Text-to-Speech, Amazon Polly, Microsoft Azure Speech, Murf, and WellSaid Labs. The right pick depends on your budget, the languages you need, and whether you want a simple web tool or a developer API.
What are the reviews and complaints about ElevenLabs?
Reviewers often praise ElevenLabs for lifelike voices, emotional range, and strong multilingual support, and many call it the best AI voice generator they have tested. Common complaints include credits running out quickly on lower plans, higher costs for heavy use, occasional mispronunciations or audio glitches that require regenerating clips, and inconsistent results between generations. Some critics also raise concerns about voice cloning being misused for deepfakes and scam calls.
How do I use ElevenLabs?
Sign up for a free account on the ElevenLabs website and open the text-to-speech tool. Type or paste your script, choose a voice from the library, pick a model, and adjust settings like stability and style. Click generate to create the audio, then download the file. From the same dashboard you can also try speech-to-speech, voice cloning, AI dubbing, sound effects, and music generation.
Are the TikTok voices AI?
Yes. TikTok's built-in text-to-speech voices are computer-generated voices that read on-screen text aloud. Many creators also use third-party tools like ElevenLabs to produce more realistic narration or custom voices, then upload that audio to their TikTok videos.
What is ElevenLabs used for?
People use ElevenLabs to narrate YouTube videos, podcasts, and audiobooks without hiring voice actors. Companies use it to translate and dub films, training courses, and ads into other languages. Developers add its real-time speech into apps, games, and virtual assistants through the ElevenAPI, and businesses build voice agents for customer support and sales with ElevenAgents.
Who founded ElevenLabs?
ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Piotr Dąbkowski, a former machine learning engineer at Google, and Mateusz Staniszewski, a former strategist at Palantir. The two set out to improve the poor voice dubbing they saw in foreign films. The company has since grown into a full AI audio platform valued at over $3 billion.
What is the ElevenLabs app?
ElevenLabs runs mainly as a web platform, with mobile apps for listening and creating on the go. Its product lineup includes ElevenCreative for speech, music, sound effects, and image and video editing, ElevenAgents for voice and chat agents, and the ElevenAPI for developers. The ElevenReader app turns articles, PDFs, and ebooks into spoken audio.
Can ElevenLabs clone any voice?
ElevenLabs can create a digital copy of a voice from audio samples. Instant Voice Cloning works with a short clip, while Professional Voice Cloning uses longer recordings to produce a closer match. You may only clone voices you have the rights to use, and the platform asks for voice verification on professional clones to prevent people from copying someone else's voice without consent.
How do you change voice tone in ElevenLabs?
Use the voice settings sliders. Lowering stability makes the voice more expressive and varied, while raising it gives a steadier, more even delivery. The style setting exaggerates the voice's character, and similarity controls how closely the output sticks to the original voice. Punctuation, word choice, and descriptive context in your script also shape the tone, and newer models accept audio tags like [whispers] or [excited] to direct emotion.
Is ElevenLabs free?
ElevenLabs has a free plan that lets you start without a credit card. It comes with a limited number of monthly credits and allows you to try text-to-speech and other tools. Paid plans add more credits, a commercial license, higher audio quality, and access to features like Professional Voice Cloning, and you can cancel at any time.
FAQ on ElevenLabs Netherlands and Voice AI in 2026
Which ElevenLabs product line should a Dutch small business start with?
ElevenLabs runs three product lines: ElevenAgents for voice and chat agents, ElevenCreative for creators and marketers, and ElevenAPI for developers. A clinic or webshop automating calls fits ElevenAgents, while course creators fit ElevenCreative. Start with one line and expand after you see results. Explore the ElevenLabs product lines for founders
How fast did ElevenLabs' valuation grow during 2026?
In February 2026, ElevenLabs raised a $500M Series D at an $11B valuation. Within months it reached $22B. The growth mirrors customer service adoption: Salesforce data shows AI handled 30% of service cases in 2025, a share projected to reach 50% by 2027. Review the latest AI voice startup statistics
Are there free ElevenLabs alternatives that work for Dutch voiceovers?
Bootstrapped founders can trial free tools like TTSMaker, NaturalReader, Murf.ai, Play.ht or Lovo.ai before paying. Dutch output quality varies widely, so run the same script through each tool and ask native speakers from the Randstad and Flanders to rank the results. Compare free ElevenLabs alternatives for startups
How can I avoid vendor lock-in when building a voice agent?
Store scripts, prompts and transcripts in vendor-neutral formats, route calls through an abstraction layer, and test a backup provider every quarter. Before signing, check data processing terms, security certifications, uptime guarantees and consent safeguards. This keeps your negotiating power intact. Read the vendor due diligence advice for voice AI
What should an internal voice cloning policy include?
A solid policy covers four checkpoints: written consent from the voice owner, an approval step before any clone goes live, clear disclosure to listeners, and rules for where recordings are stored and deleted. Assign one person to sign off on every new voice. Use the voice cloning governance checklist
How do I connect an AI voice agent to my booking system or CRM?
Use no-code automation platforms like Make or n8n to send call outcomes, such as bookings, cancellations or handoff requests, into your calendar, CRM or helpdesk. Start with one workflow and log every failed handoff. Automate further only once the process runs reliably. Build your first AI automations for startups
Does ElevenLabs retain the audio data my customers generate?
ElevenLabs states that for ZRM-eligible API services with Zero Retention Mode correctly enabled, certain types of data are not retained. Website traffic is not covered. Healthcare and finance teams should confirm ZRM eligibility in writing and review the documentation before launch. Check ElevenLabs data retention and voice protection details
Why is the company called ElevenLabs?
"Eleven" refers to November 11, Poland's National Independence Day, reflecting the founders' Polish roots. "Labs" signals the company's research and development focus. For Dutch founders, it shows that a brand story rooted in personal heritage can still travel well into foreign markets. Read the ElevenLabs company history
Can I work for ElevenLabs remotely from outside Amsterdam?
Many ElevenLabs roles are listed as remote. These include the Benelux B2B Growth Marketer and engineering and AI safety positions open across multiple countries. Tailor your application to enterprise deployment, multilingual markets or safety work, where the company is visibly hiring. Browse ElevenLabs remote and Netherlands job openings
Should I retest Dutch voices when ElevenLabs releases new models?
Yes. New releases, such as Eleven v4, which the company calls its most emotive model, can change pronunciation, pacing and tone. Keep a benchmark script with Dutch place names, numbers and English tech terms. Rerun it after each update before switching production voices. Follow ElevenLabs company and model updates
