ElevenLabs, the world’s foremost generative AI audio firm, has announced a startup funding initiative called ElevenLabs Grants. The AI audio technology platform aims to help entrepreneurs, innovators, “and companies get projects off the ground” by making “on-demand multilingual audio support a reality”. If you have an AI audio startup, or merely an idea for one, ElevenLabs Grants program could be exactly the help you need.
What are ElevenLabs Grants?
The grants are issued in the form of free access to its AI voice technology platform. ElevenLabs will provide you its best-in-class technology to build your idea. This way, you don’t have to attempt to recreate the technology yourself, unsuccessfully and at the cost of millions of dollars.
These core-hours are free for the grantee, but cost the granted a lot of money, and so the grant is limited by time and token usage.
If successful, you’ll have 3 months to build your product and test publicly without incurring startup-killing costs. This testing can use up to 11,000,000 text characters per month, which ElevenLabs equates to “over 200 hours of generated audio”. This should be enough to tell that customers are enjoying your product, and that it works in the first place. Also included in the grant is early access to new features, and high bandwidth to accommodate multiple of your own users using your product at the same time.
How to apply for ElevenLabs Grants – Eligibility requirements
There are, of course, eligibility requirements to be accepted for a grant.
- Monetization: You must be building a for-profit company with a monetized product so that ElevenLabs can eventually hope to make its money back in API fees.
- Long-term vision: You must intend to build something that will last multiple profitable years, again giving ElevenLabs time to recoup.
- Early-stage Startups and Small businesses: You must have no more than 25 full-time employees. Think of it as an early-stage venture fund — early investment, high risk, high percentage yield (but the risk is on ElevenLabs, not you).
- One chance: You may only submit one application for each company you own. Existing Enterprise customers are ineligible, presumably as they already have the money they need.
Startup ideas involving human-like AI voices, speech synthesis, dubbing, voice cloning, text-to-speech or other tools relating to voice data and generative AI, can make use of ElevenLabs technology platform.
Step
Apply for your grant
Apply for ElevenLabs Grants here. The application involves telling ElevenLabs “about the product you’re building, your team, how you expect to grow.”
Step
Wait (up to) 8 weeks
Within eight weeks of your submission, you’ll either have received a letter confirming your acceptance, or be declined.
Step
Build your idea
If accepted, the ElevenLabs account you applied with will be awarded the Grants Plan, which come with the aforementioned benefits.
After the grant ends, recipients can “either convert their grant plans to an enterprise plan at a significant discount, switch to any of our standard plans, or cancel their plan.”
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What’s the deadline for a grant application?
ElevenLabs are accepting applications for the next six months. You’ll know whether or not your company was accepted within eight weeks of submitting your application.
