ElevenLabs CEO says AI audio models will be ‘commoditized’ over time

AI Audio Company Eleven LabsCo-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski believes AI models will be commoditized over time, a revealing comment for a company focused on building them today.

Speaking on stage TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 At Tuesday’s conference, the ElevenLabs founder was discussing both his short-term and long-term views on the AI ​​audio space.

Staniszewski says his company’s researchers have been able to crack some of the model architecture challenges, and this focus will continue in the audio space for the next year or two.

“In the long term, it will be commoditized — within the next few years,” Staniszewski said. “Even if there were differences — which I think would be true for some voices, some languages ​​— on their own, the differences would be small.”

Asked why ElevenLabs would focus on building models if he believed they would be commoditized in time, Staniszewski explained that, in the short term, they are still “the biggest advantage and the biggest step change you can have today.”

For example, if the AI ​​voice or interactions aren’t good, it’s still a problem that needs to be solved.

“The only way to solve it is to … build the models yourself, and then, in the long run, there will be other players who will also solve it,” Staniszewski said.

He also noted that those looking for reliable, scalable use cases will still use different models for different use cases.

However, in the next year or two, Staniszewski said an increasing number of models will move to multi-model or fused systems.

“So, you’ll be producing audio and video at the same time, or audio and LLM at the same time in a conversational setting,” he said, pointing to Google’s Veo 3 as an example of what can be achieved when combining the models.

The founder said that ElevenLabs plans to launch partnerships with other companies and work with open source technology to see if the company can combine its audio expertise with some of the capabilities of other models.

ElevenLabs aims to focus on both model building and applications to create long-term value, he said.

“Just as software and hardware were magic for Apple, we think products and AI in the best use cases will be magic for generations,” he added.