Cohere vs ElevenLabs: Founders, CEOs and History
Cohere was founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, Nick Frosst and is led by Aidan Gomez. ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dabkowski and is led by Mati Staniszewski.
Company facts
Cohere
- Founded
- 2019
- Headquarters
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Current CEO
- Aidan Gomez
- Employees
- 350
ElevenLabs
- Founded
- 2022
- Headquarters
- London, United Kingdom & New York City, New York, United States
- Current CEO
- Mati Staniszewski
- Employees
- 800
Founders
Cohere
Aidan Gomez
Aidan Gomez is co-founder and CEO of Cohere. As a Google Brain intern he co-authored 'Attention Is All You Need' (2017) with seven other researchers.
Ivan Zhang
Ivan Zhang is a co-founder of Cohere. Before Cohere he co-founded FOR.ai, an open research collective, with Aidan Gomez. At Cohere he has worked on the engineering and infrastructure that serve the company's models to enterprise customers.
Nick Frosst
Nick Frosst is a co-founder of Cohere. He was Geoffrey Hinton's first hire at Google Brain's Toronto lab, where he published research on capsule networks and adversarial robustness.
ElevenLabs
Mati Staniszewski
Mati Staniszewski is the Polish-born co-founder and CEO of ElevenLabs. He grew up near Warsaw, studied mathematics at Imperial College London and worked at Palantir before starting ElevenLabs with school friend Piotr Dabkowski in 2022.
Piotr Dabkowski
Piotr Dabkowski is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of ElevenLabs. He studied at the University of Cambridge, worked as a machine learning engineer at Google and leads the research behind ElevenLabs' speech, transcription and music models. Piotr Dabkow…
CEOs and their tenures
Cohere
- Aidan Gomez2019–present
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As co-founder and CEO, he leveraged his status as a co-author of the seminal 'Attention Is All You Need' paper to secure massive funding from Oracle and Nvidia.
Source - Martin Kon2023–2025
President and Chief Operating Officer
As President and COO (hired away from YouTube), he professionalized the startup's go-to-market strategy, driving significant ARR growth in the highly competitive B2B AI sector.
Source - Joelle Pineau2025–present
Chief AI Officer
Her academic research heavily influences the foundational reinforcement learning techniques used by enterprise AI startups globally.
Source - Francois Chadwick2025–present
Chief Financial Officer
He brought deep operational expertise from his time at Uber to manage the rapid headcount expansion of the AI startup.
Source - Phil Blunsom2025–present
Chief Technology Officer
As Chief Scientist, he directs the core research team, ensuring Cohere's models remain competitive with OpenAI and Anthropic in massive-scale language understanding.
Source
ElevenLabs
- Mati Staniszewski2022–present
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As Co-Founder and CEO, he rapidly scaled the company from a tiny startup into a $1.1 billion unicorn in less than two years, securing massive funding from Andreessen Horowitz.
Source - Piotr Dabkowski2022–present
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
As Co-Founder and CTO, he leveraged his previous experience as a Google machine learning engineer to build the absolute most realistic AI voice generator on the market.
Source
Timeline: Cohere and ElevenLabs side by side
2017Cohere
Aidan Gomez Co-Authors 'Attention Is All You Need'
Aidan Gomez and Google Brain colleagues published the landmark paper introducing the Transformer architecture.
2019Cohere
Cohere Founded in Toronto
Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frosst founded Cohere to build privacy-first enterprise language models.
2021Cohere
Series A Funding & Multi-Cloud Platform Launch
Raised $40 million Series A led by Index Ventures, debuting its commercial developer API for text generation and embeddings.
2022Cohere
Strategic Partnership with Oracle Cloud
Formed historic alliance with Oracle, making Cohere the primary generative AI engine embedded across Oracle Cloud Applications.
2022Cohere
Series B Funding
Cohere raised $125 million in a Series B round led by Tiger Global in February 2022.
2022ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs founded
Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski start the company to build expressive AI voice and dubbing.
2023Cohere
Series C Funding at $2.2B Valuation Led by Inovia
Raised $270 million in Series C funding with participation from NVIDIA, Oracle, and Salesforce Ventures.
2023Cohere
Debut on Amazon Bedrock & Release of Embed v3
Integrated models into Amazon Bedrock and launched Embed v3, establishing leadership in multilingual search.
2023ElevenLabs
Public beta and $19M Series A
Beta launches in January; Series A co-led by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross and Andreessen Horowitz follows in June.
2024Cohere
Launch of Command R and Command R+
Released Command R (March) and Command R+ (April) for enterprise RAG and tool use.
2024Cohere
$500M Series D Funding at $5.5B Valuation
Closed $500 million Series D led by PSP Investments, with participation from Cisco, AMD, and Fujitsu, reaching a $5.5B valuation.
2024ElevenLabs
$80M Series B at $1.1B valuation
January 2024 round makes ElevenLabs a unicorn; the company later launches its Conversational AI agent platform and Reader app.
2025Cohere
Command A, North and ~$7B valuation
Launched Command A and North, raised $500 million at $6.8 billion, and reached about $7 billion after a September extension.
2025ElevenLabs
$180M Series C at $3.3B; ARR passes $330M
January 2025 round co-led by a16z and ICONIQ; Eleven v3 and Eleven Music launch during the year.
2026Cohere
Reports $240M ARR for 2025
Investor memo showed about $240 million ARR, beating its $200 million target.
2026Cohere
Aleph Alpha merger announced and signed
Announced in April 2026 with a ~$565 million (€500 million) Schwarz Group commitment; definitive agreement signed September 16, 2026.
2026ElevenLabs
$500M Series D at $11B
Sequoia Capital leads the February 2026 round; ARR passes $500 million in April.
2026ElevenLabs
$300M employee tender at $22B
September 30, 2026 tender co-led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price doubles the Series D valuation.
Acquisitions
Cohere
- Reliant AI2026Undisclosed
- Aleph Alpha2026Undisclosed
- Ottogrid2025Undisclosed
Questions about Cohere vs ElevenLabs
Who is the CEO of Cohere Inc. and ElevenLabs?
Cohere Inc. is led by Aidan Gomez and ElevenLabs is led by Mati Staniszewski. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was Cohere Inc. founded vs ElevenLabs?
Cohere Inc. was founded in 2019 — 3 years before ElevenLabs, which was founded in 2022. Cohere Inc.'s longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger ElevenLabs.
How many employees does Cohere Inc. have compared to ElevenLabs?
Cohere Inc. employs approximately 350 people, while ElevenLabs employs approximately 800. ElevenLabs has the larger workforce at 800 employees, compared to Cohere Inc.'s 350. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are Cohere Inc. and ElevenLabs headquartered?
Cohere Inc. is headquartered in Canada and ElevenLabs is headquartered in United States. Their different home markets mean they may face different regulatory frameworks, tax regimes, and currency exposure.
Who founded Cohere Inc. and ElevenLabs?
Cohere Inc. was founded by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, Nick Frosst. ElevenLabs was founded by Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dabkowski.
Which company has a longer operating history — Cohere Inc. or ElevenLabs?
Cohere Inc. has been operating for approximately 7 years, making it the more established of the two companies. ElevenLabs has been in operation for around 4 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Cohere vs ElevenLabs overview