Matty Staniszewski, co-founder and CEO of AI audio company ElevenLab, believes that AI models will become commoditized over time, an obvious comment for a company currently focused on building AI models.
Speaking on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Tuesday, he shared both his short-term and long-term views on the AI audio space.
Staniszewski said that his company’s researchers have been able to solve some of the model architecture challenges, and that this work will continue in the audio field over the next year or two.
“Long term, it’s going to become a commodity over the next few years,” Staniszewski said. “Even if there is a difference, which I think is true for some voices, some languages, by itself, the difference will be even smaller.”
Asked why Eleven Labs is focused on building models when he believes they will eventually become commoditized, Staniszewski explained that in the short term, models are still “the biggest advantage and the biggest change you can get today.”
For example, if your AI voice or interactions don’t sound good, that’s still an issue that needs to be resolved.
“The only way to solve it… is to build the model yourself, so in the long run other players will solve it too,” Staniszewski said.
He also noted that people seeking reliable and scalable use cases are still likely to use different models for each use case.
However, Staniszewski said that over the next year or two, more and more models will move toward multimodal or fusion approaches.
“So you’re creating audio and video at the same time in a conversational environment, or you’re creating audio and LLM at the same time,” he said, pointing to Google’s Veo 3 as an example of what can be achieved when the models are combined.
The founders said Eleven Labs plans to start partnering with other companies and working with open source technologies to see if the company’s audio expertise can be combined with some of the expertise of other models.
Eleven Labs’ goal is to create long-term value by focusing on both model building and applications, he said.
“Just as software and hardware were magic for Apple, we believe products and AI will be the magic that creates the best use cases,” he added.
