Mon. Dec 23rd, 2024
Eleven Labs Secures $80 Million For Voice Cloning, Ai Photography

Now that President Joe Biden’s voice is being cloned for President Trump’s robocalls, the smart companies that fool our lying eyes and ears are making money. Considering that things created to please us can so easily turn against us, we wonder if it is possible to create an antidote to the poison.

AI voice startup Eleven Labs raises $80 million in Series B. This brings total funding to $101 million, including the previous Series A round of $19 million. This recent investment increases the company’s valuation to $1.1 billion. The funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, and Daniel Gross, with participation from Sequoia Capital and SV Angel. His Eleven Lab, founded by former Google and his Palantir engineers, specializes in voice cloning and synthesis using machine learning. The company also plans to introduce new features such as a movie dubbing tool and a marketplace for users to sell their AI-reproduced audio.

AI photography app Artisse wins $6.7 million seed round. This app transforms your most unflattering selfies into supermodel-worthy snaps on exotic sets. The app is gaining attention from influencers, models, and marketers who can’t help but snap dreamy shots next to luxury cars in haute couture outfits. Artisse says he expects this year’s subscription revenue to reach his $2.5 million in two months. The company is considering virtual fitting room technology for online shopping, allowing people to model their own clothes in different fits and poses, as well as one day a group photo feature where they can “pose” with friends and celebrities. We plan to install it. Led the London Fund funding round.

$10 million pre-order for $200 Rabbit R1. Designed in collaboration with design firm Teenage Engineering, the handheld AI device looks more like a Tamagotchi than a smartphone. It’s about half the size of a smartphone and has a camera, scroll wheel, 2.8-inch touchscreen, and push-to-talk button. Powered by a 2.3 GHz MediaTek processor, Rabbit R1 has 4 GB of memory, 128 GB of storage, and a modem. Cuteness aside, there’s a big idea here called the Large Action Model, which you program through a web portal called the “Rabbit Hole” (rimshot) for use with apps and subscriptions. The only one similar to the Rabbit R1 is Humane’s AI Pin, but it costs $500 more, doesn’t have a screen, and requires a monthly subscription. That begs the question. Once Rabbit works and people start using it at scale, how will we pay for the huge amount of cloud computing that will be required? No one seems to know.