Mati Staniszewski is successful. At 31, he owns a company worth $11 billion and competes with giants like Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. His ElevenLabs has great potential to become the voice of artificial intelligence around the world.

Who is ElevenLabs

It is a Warsaw-London-based startup that deals with voice agents with artificial intelligence. The company was founded by Staniszewski together with Piotr Dabkowski. They own an estimated 15% stake in the company. At the beginning, the pair pooled their savings and in 2022, both founders quit their jobs to pursue their own businesses. They risked everything because they believed in their abilities and it is clear that it paid off.

I greatly admire this move as they couldn’t be sure if it would really work out and their company would thrive. Not only did they both give up their jobs in reputable companies, but they also risked their money. Not everyone can do that these days. Rather, many are risk-averse and keep their heads down.

What the company is doing

The company combines research and products. It creates models for sound, voice, production and voice understanding. Its solutions are designed to help other companies transform the way they communicate with customers: in customer service, sales, marketing and other creative tasks.

According to ElevenLabs, the company ended 2025 with annual recurring revenue (ARR) in excess of $330 million. Its tools are used by companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Square, Revolut, the Ukrainian government, Duolingo, Nvidia, Time, Meta, Epic Games, Salesforce, MasterClass and Harvey.

Staniszewski stresses that ElevenLabs was built with the global market in mind from the very beginning. “We are lucky to have Polish roots, to have incredibly talented people on our team, and to build our future, our team, with them, ” he says. He adds that the team currently numbers 550 people.

Mati has vast experience

Mati Staniszewski, who co-founded the company where he leads the team creating artificial intelligence that can communicate on a human level, has a wealth of experience at his age. He previously worked at Palantir, where he had the opportunity to work not only with various major companies, but also with governments. He grew up in Poland before moving to the UK where he studied mathematics at Imperial College London.

━━ ( Source: Microsoft Copilot /  Unsplash+ )

How does a young man with billions in the bank feel?

According to him, although the numbers in the account are high, they don’t play a role in decision-making. “The numbers are high on paper, and they’re high on paper, including how much the company is worth, how much value each of us has in it – they’re big numbers, but ultimately it’s not something you think about or something that influences any decision,“ he says.

He adds that money is not the motivation. “All of us wanted to change something because we had a problem, because we knew it was something that would change things for the better, something that would leave a mark on us,” he says. His dream is to create a company that becomes one of the global platforms for building communication assistants. And what is the ceiling for ElevenLabs’ growth? According to him, the sky is the limit.

It is evident that the young and successful man is not afraid of anything and is going straight for his goal. He is not afraid of obstacles and wants to be among the world’s top in what he does. He is aware that Europe, and especially Poland, has many highly talented individuals who want to work on ambitious projects.