ElevenLabs is best known for its text to speech and voice cloning technology. In 2024 and 2025, it moved beyond pure audio into full conversational AI with a product now called ElevenLabs Agents (formerly Conversational AI).
This article focuses on ElevenLabs Agents, covering what the platform offers today and how it fits into the broader conversational AI landscape.
ElevenLabs company snapshot
ElevenLabs itself is a relatively young company, but already high profile in the AI audio space.
Company snapshot
- Founded: 2022
- Founders: Piotr Dąbkowski and Mati (Mateusz) Staniszewski
- Headquarters: London, with US presence reported in New York
- Employees: Roughly 300
- Funding and valuation: More than 280 million dollars raised, including a 180 million dollar Series C at a 3.3 billion dollar valuation in early 2025, with later reports of a valuation around 6.6 billion dollars after secondary share sales
- Focus: Generative AI for audio and now conversational agents
- Website: elevenlabs.com
Agents is one product in a broader portfolio that includes TTS, dubbing, music generation and more, all centered on audio.
Key Takeaways on ElevenLabs Agents
1. Audio first: ElevenLabs approaches conversational AI from an audio perspective. The strength of Agents lies in realistic, expressive voices, streaming infrastructure and low latency turn taking. For use cases where voice experience is central, this is a clear advantage.
2. Integrated stack for voice and chat: Agents provides speech to text, an LLM layer and text to speech in one product. This shortens the path from idea to working prototype, especially for teams that do not want to orchestrate multiple vendors for ASR, NLU and TTS.
3. LLM based behavior: The intelligence of Agents is LLM driven, supported by prompts, workflows and knowledge retrieval. This fits many contemporary use cases but means behavior is largely probabilistic which is prone to hallucinations rather than built on a deterministic NLU layer.
ElevenLabs Agents Best Alternative for Enterprises: Teneo.ai
For many enterprises, the question is less about whether ElevenLabs Agents is capable and more about how it fits into a broader automation strategy that spans countries, brands, channels and regulatory environments.
- A deterministic linguistic modeling layer (TLML) for fine grained intent and dialog control
- The ability to orchestrate one or more LLMs where generative reasoning adds value
- Tooling that supports complex, multi step journeys across voice, chat and digital channels
Teneo has been used for many years in large contact centers (CCaaS providers), including telco, financial services, healthcare and global consumer brands. It is built to support multilingual deployments, strict governance and integration with existing CCaaS and backend systems.
At a high level, where ElevenLabs Agents is strongest around audio quality and integrated voice infrastructure but quite limited on Agentic AI, something Teneo can deliver for enterprises in over 86+ languages.
When to Consider Teneo instead of ElevenLabs Agents
Enterprises evaluating ElevenLabs Agents will often compare it with a platform like Teneo to understand which is the better fit for their long term roadmap.
You may want to consider Teneo instead of, or alongside, ElevenLabs Agents if:
You want to avoid lock in at the model layer
You prefer a vendor agnostic orchestration platform that lets you change or mix underlying NLU and LLM engines over time without rebuilding your conversational experiences.
You operate at global scale
You need to support many markets and languages with consistent behavior, and want one platform to manage logic, content and updates across regions.
Accuracy and governance are non negotiable
Your use cases include high stakes workflows such as payments, identity verification, policy sensitive processes or regulated interactions where explainability and audit trails are essential. Using Teneo eliminates the risk of hallucinations.
You require omnichannel orchestration
Voice is important, but so are chat, messaging and web. You want a single conversational layer that can sit on top of existing CCaaS platforms and digital channels.
In practice, ElevenLabs Agents can play a role where voice experience and rapid experimentation in small projects are the main goals. For organisations that view Agentic AI as a strategic capability, need long term control and compliance, and want a single layer to orchestrate automation across channels and regions, Teneo is the safer and more future proof choice.