ElevenLabs Launches Expressive Mode for AI Voice Agents After $500M Raise
Zach Anderson Feb 12, 2026 05:31
ElevenLabs unveils Expressive Mode for ElevenAgents, adding emotional intelligence to AI voice agents days after closing $500M Series D at $11B valuation.
ElevenLabs rolled out Expressive Mode for its ElevenAgents platform on February 10, giving enterprise customers emotionally intelligent voice agents that can adapt tone in real-time during customer interactions. The release comes just days after the company closed a $500 million Series D round at an $11 billion valuation.
The feature targets a persistent problem in AI customer service: robotic responses that escalate frustrated callers rather than calming them down.
What's Actually New
Expressive Mode combines two technical upgrades. First, Eleven v3 Conversational—a text-to-speech model that maintains emotional context across an entire conversation rather than processing each response in isolation. Second, a revamped turn-taking system that uses real-time transcription signals to determine when an agent should speak, pause, or wait.
The practical application? When a customer's speaking pace spikes and volume surges—classic stress indicators—the system can shift to a calmer, more reassuring delivery. Bright, rising intonation gets matched with appropriate enthusiasm rather than flat acknowledgment.
ElevenLabs claims the feature works across 70+ languages, specifically highlighting improvements in Hindi and regional Spanish dialects where emotional nuance previously fell short.
Enterprise Play Gets Bigger
The timing here matters. ElevenLabs isn't just shipping features—they're positioning ElevenAgents as the enterprise standard for voice AI deployment. The platform already powers over three million voice agents across enterprise clients, with the company claiming adoption by employees at more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies including Square, Revolut, and MasterClass.
That $500 million raise on February 4 was explicitly earmarked for expanding ElevenAgents alongside their creative tools and API offerings. The company also secured what they're calling a "first-of-its-kind" AIUC-1-backed insurance policy covering their AI voice agents—a move that addresses enterprise risk concerns head-on.
The Competitive Angle
Voice AI for customer operations has become a crowded space, but ElevenLabs is betting that emotional intelligence separates commodity solutions from premium ones. Sub-500ms response times and 99% reliability are table stakes at this point. Making an AI agent sound genuinely empathetic when someone's flight just got canceled? That's harder to replicate.
Whether Expressive Mode actually delivers on the "blur the line between AI and human" promise remains to be seen in production environments. But with $500 million in fresh capital and an $11 billion valuation to justify, ElevenLabs is clearly betting that enterprise customers will pay premium prices for AI that doesn't make their customers angrier.
Image source: Shutterstock- elevenlabs
- ai voice agents
- enterprise ai
- conversational ai
- series d
