ElevenLabs Co-founder Mati Staniszewski Announces Office Opening in Amsterdam, Concurrent Hiring
ElevenLabs co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski announced the official opening of ElevenLabs Netherlands and the establishment of an office in Amsterdam, along with concurrent hiring.
The company account shared the recruitment link. The announcement did not specify the number of positions in the Netherlands, rental costs, or a list of initial clients, focusing instead on team building and office opening. Staniszewski co-founded the company with Piotr Dąbkowski in 2022, starting with an estimated valuation of around $9 million, addressing poor voice-over quality in Poland.
The expansion comes after the company has already established a presence. It has offices in 20 countries, and its workforce has doubled to 800 employees over the past year; the main office in London has about 200 employees, and the company is registered in Delaware. Staniszewski told the Financial Times that to be a global company, one must have a very local presence, as voice interaction requires local linguistic nuance.
The European expansion has been ongoing. In June 2026, the company signed a memorandum with the UK government to explore using voice AI to improve public service accessibility, stating that its UK workforce has doubled and it is moving into a new office. An office is set to open in Brussels around September 30 to be closer to clients and develop local AI. The Netherlands represents the same logic applied to Amsterdam.
On the valuation side, a round of secondary stock transfers has just been completed. Existing investors and employees sold approximately $300 million in stock, doubling the valuation to $22 billion; Goldman Sachs and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC have entered as long-term institutional investors. Staniszewski expressed hope that the company would be ready for an IPO in 2 to 2.5 years, with the decision to go public depending on other factors, and he declined to comment on whether he would sell shares. He has previously rejected acquisition offers.
In market mechanics, this is driven by recruitment and local delivery, not trading. What is being bought is local Dutch voice, enterprise customer service, and public service project staffing; what is being sold is the gap in remote coverage that lacks local linguistic nuance. Money flows from the $22 billion valuation corresponding to equity and client budgets into Amsterdam office spaces and voice researchers. Benefiting are ElevenLabs, which aims to retain researchers and develop voice as an interface; under pressure are voice competitors that only produce English models and lack local offices.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Staniszewski and Dąbkowski's path is to first focus on voice-over and then develop voice as an interface. Starting from an estimated valuation of $9 million in 2022, they have kept the company independent by rejecting acquisition offers; in 2026, they brought in Goldman Sachs and GIC with about $300 million in secondary stock, stating a 2 to 2.5-year preparation period for an IPO. The office expansion follows a regional strategy: about 200 people in London, a memorandum signed with the UK for public services and a doubled workforce, Brussels just established, and Amsterdam is the next stop.
Capital has not been initially invested in Dutch real estate but has first provided liquidity to employees and existing shareholders, then used local offices to gain linguistic nuance. The motivation is that voice models will distort if they leave local accents, customer service scripts, and public service standards. The strategy is to place forward engineers on-site with clients to gather both data and delivery back into the product, rather than just training an English model in London.
Industry positioning is during a period of localized expansion. In contrast to Palantir embedding forward engineers with clients and Salesforce acquiring MuleSoft to enhance integration layers, ElevenLabs replicates "research plus on-site delivery" at the voice layer. Dutch telecom, retail, and energy clients are already using voice agents, and the office changes this delivery from remote to on-site.
Structurally, this belongs to an industrial chain reconstruction. As text interfaces are replaced by voice interfaces, pricing shifts from model parameters to who holds local data and client sites. The mechanism is: global models set the lower limit, local offices determine access to public services and corporate switchboards; staffing follows regional dialects, not headquarters cities.
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