AI speech software firm ElevenLabs sets up shop in S’pore; hires engineering, sales roles

Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of ElevenLabs, on Oct 9, 2026.

ST PHOTO: AZMI ATHNI

Published Oct 09, 2026, 05:34 PM

Updated Oct 09, 2026, 05:34 PM

SINGAPORE - Artificial intelligence speech software firm ElevenLabs has set up shop in Singapore and will hire for roles across engineering and sales, as part of a push to build chatbots and narration services that reflect regional languages and dialects.

The startup, valued at US$22 billion, joins a growing list of AI companies looking to benefit from the Singapore government’s support for local firms and residents to adopt AI.

The move to establish its new regional headquarters here comes three months after the firm began hosting its core AI models on Singapore-based infrastructure to better service regional customers, including locally-based digital finance firm Atome Financial and Malaysian digital bank Boost Bank.

AI voice and conversational agents require almost instant processing to sound natural. Being close to its customers allow ElevenLabs to achieve this by reducing network latency.

Local hosting also ensures that customer data and inference logs remain within Singapore’s physical jurisdiction, protected under local intellectual property laws and security framework.

Speaking to The Straits Times on Oct 9, co-founder and chief executive Mati Staniszewski said the firm hopes to tap the strong research and engineering talent in Singapore, to expand its team of 25 employees who are working remotely.

“We are looking to continue hiring pretty aggressively on engineering, go-to-market, marketing, and other cross-functional domains,” he added.

Staniszewski declined to commit to a hiring target, but said it is possible that the employee pool here might reach 100 in the next few years. These new hires include f orward deployed engineers, who will help clients here build their own voice agents.

The 31-year-old Polish entrepreneur was in Singapore to speak at the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2026. He also launched ElevenLabs’ Singapore office on Oct 8.

The startup said in July that it had surpassed US$600 million in global annual recurring revenue earlier. More than half its annual revenue comes from its enterprise customers including tech firms Meta, Salesforce, Stripe and Revolut.

ElevenLabs competes with other conversational voice agent makers such as Wiz.AI, Instadesk, Google and Amazon.

In September, ElevenLabs launched its latest V4 model, which can understand nuance, speak in a wide range of emotions and process over 90 languages, including Malay, Tamil and Mandarin. It also plans to train its models in Singlish.

“While in Singapore, my team has taught me that various phrases like ‘can leh’ and ‘can lor’ may look similar but have very different meanings. That’s ultimately what we are solving on the research side, and bring into production,” Staniszewski said.

“As we think about deploying the technology across South-east Asia, we are going to invest even more to make sure that all languages are covered.”

During the launch of ElevenLabs’ office on Oct 8, Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Tan Kiat How said that helpline conversation bots are especially useful as people, especially seniors, need not navigate menus or think about how to craft text-based prompts.

“The results can be better customer experience, faster resolution of requests and more productive use of employees’ time,” said Tan. “This is the kind of transformation we want to see more of: technology solving a real problem, in a real workflow with a real outcome.”

Tan cautioned that the adoption of synthetic voices needs to work alongside trust from the people, and added that the firm’s move to host models on local infrastructure is significant in supporting requirements around data residency, security and latency.

“As voice AI becomes part of more sensitive interactions, these foundations will matter even more.”

AI/artificial intelligence

Technology and research

ElevenLabs 联合创始人 Mati Staniszewski，2026 年 10 月 9 日。

ST 摄影：AZMI ATHNI

发布于 2026 年 10 月 9 日下午 5:34

更新于2026年10月9日下午5:34

新加坡——人工智能语音软件公司 ElevenLabs 已在新加坡设立办事处，并将招聘工程和销售等职位，以推动构建反映区域语言和方言的聊天机器人和旁白服务。

这家估值达 220 亿美元的初创公司加入了越来越多的 AI 公司行列，这些公司都希望从新加坡政府对本地企业和居民采用 AI 的支持中受益。

三个月前，该公司开始在新加坡的基础设施上托管其核心人工智能模型，以便更好地服务于包括本地数字金融公司 Atome Financial 和马来西亚数字银行 Boost Bank 在内的区域客户。随后，该公司决定在此设立新的区域总部。

人工智能语音和对话代理需要近乎即时的处理才能听起来自然。ElevenLabs 凭借与客户的紧密联系，通过降低网络延迟实现了这一点。

本地托管还能确保客户数据和推理日志保留在新加坡的物理管辖范围内，受到当地知识产权法律和安全框架的保护。

联合创始人兼首席执行官马蒂·斯坦尼谢夫斯基 (Mati Staniszewski) 于 10 月 9 日在接受《海峡时报》采访时表示，该公司希望利用新加坡强大的研发和工程人才，扩大其目前 25 名远程办公员工的团队。

“我们计划继续在工程、市场推广、营销和其他跨职能领域积极招聘人才，”他补充道。

斯坦尼谢夫斯基拒绝透露具体的招聘目标，但他表示，未来几年内，这里的员工人数有可能达到100人。这些新员工包括前线部署工程师，他们将帮助客户构建自己的语音代理系统。

这位 31 岁的波兰企业家来到新加坡，出席 2026 年米尔肯研究院亚洲峰会并发表演讲。他还于 10 月 8 日启动了 ElevenLabs 的新加坡办事处。

这家初创公司在7月份表示，其全球年度经常性收入此前已突破6亿美元。其超过一半的年度收入来自企业客户，其中包括Meta、Salesforce、Stripe和Revolut等科技公司。

ElevenLabs 的竞争对手包括 Wiz.AI、Instadesk、Google 和 Amazon 等其他对话式语音代理制造商。

今年9月，ElevenLabs推出了最新的V4模型，该模型能够理解细微差别，表达丰富的情感，并能处理包括马来语、泰米尔语和普通话在内的90多种语言。该公司还计划训练其模型使用新加坡式英语（Singlish）。

斯坦尼谢夫斯基说：“在新加坡期间，我的团队让我明白，像‘can leh’和‘can lor’这样的短语虽然看起来很相似，但含义却截然不同。这正是我们在研究方面最终要解决的问题，并最终将其应用于生产。”

“当我们考虑在东南亚地区部署这项技术时，我们将投入更多资金，以确保所有语言都能得到覆盖。”

10 月 8 日，在 ElevenLabs 办公室的启动仪式上，数字发展及新闻部高级政务部长陈杰豪表示，热线对话机器人特别有用，因为人们，尤其是老年人，无需浏览菜单或思考如何编写基于文本的提示。

谭表示：“最终成果包括更好的客户体验、更快的请求解决速度以及更高效地利用员工时间。我们希望看到更多这样的变革：技术在实际工作流程中解决实际问题，并带来实际成果。”

Tan 提醒说，合成语音的采用需要赢得人们的信任，并补充说，该公司将模型托管在本地基础设施上对于满足数据驻留、安全性和延迟方面的要求具有重要意义。

“随着语音人工智能在更敏感的交互中扮演越来越重要的角色，这些基础将变得更加重要。”

人工智能

技术与研究