Mati Staniszewski on ElevenLabs, Voice AI & Building the Communication Layer for AI

September 9, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs, started his company in 2022—before the first version of ChatGPT launched, when the tech world was still obsessed with crypto and the metaverse. The founding idea came from a deeply personal observation: in Poland, foreign films are dubbed by a single narrator reading all characters' lines, stripping out every ounce of emotional intonation. The quality was terrible, but it was cheap and fast. Staniszewski saw that this experience would have to change, and that the underlying technology—audio AI that could understand and reproduce human voice with genuine emotion—would unlock far more than just better dubbing.

Before founding ElevenLabs, Staniszewski worked at Palantir, building optimization models for clients ranging from the UK's NHS (distributing COVID vaccines) to the oil and gas industry. His co-founder, Piotr, was at Google working on text models for the knowledge graph, with a background in university research on visual models. Staniszewski studied mathematics and previously built risk models at BlackRock. The company was designed from the start to combine research and product deployment under one roof—building frontier audio models (text-to-speech, transcription, localization, voice agent orchestration) and then unifying them into a single platform for businesses.

The Dubbing Problem That Led to Something Bigger

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What you'll learn

1 Timestamped Outline
2 (00:02) **Founding Context & AI-Native Building** - Mati explains why building an AI-native company today is genuinely different from the past, and the origin story of ElevenLabs before ChatGPT launched.
3 (01:23) **Founders' Backgrounds & Skillset** - Mati's experience at Palantir and BlackRock building optimization models, and his co-founder's research at Google on text models for knowledge graph.
4 (02:56) **From Dubbing to Voice Platform** - The original dubbing idea evolved as they realized the research for transcription, translation, and speech generation were all inadequate, and creators had more immediate needs.
5 (10:25) **Customer Discovery & Product Pivot** - How early creator feedback revealed more urgent problems than dubbing, leading ElevenLabs to focus on solving the speech generation component first.
6 (12:00) **Company Philosophy: Research Lab Model** - Mati compares ElevenLabs to Honda's approach of being a dedicated research lab for engines, with small autonomous teams and a relentless focus on audio.
7 (13:14) **Defining ElevenLabs Today** - The company is a combination of frontier audio research and a product platform that helps companies transform how they communicate.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder of ElevenLabs, an AI audio company he started in 2022 with his longtime friend Piotr Dąbkowski. He explains how a frustration with poorly dubbed content in Poland led them to build frontier speech technology, why ElevenLabs combines audio research with product deployment and how its focus on voice shapes where the company chooses to compete. Mati also describes the Palantir-inspired operating model behind ElevenLabs: small autonomous teams, a flat organization and forward deployed engineers who work directly with customers and feed what they learn back into the product. He discusses using AI to amplify human potential, helping people who have lost their voices speak again, why imperfections can make AI voices feel more human and his belief that voice will become one of the primary ways people interact with AI. After turning down multiple acquisition offers, Mati says he and Piotr are committed to building ElevenLabs independently and pursuing what they see as a rare opportunity to reshape how humans communicate with technology.

Show notes: https://www.davidenra.com/mati-staniszewski

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Chapters

(00:00:00) Building an AI-Native Company Before ChatGPT

(00:02:59) Why ElevenLabs Started With Audio & Dubbing

(00:12:37) Research + Product Deployment: How ElevenLabs Is Built

(00:16:15) Focus as a Competitive Advantage

(00:18:47) Building an Ecosystem Around Voice

(00:22:25) The Communication Platform & Deutsche Telekom