ElevenLabs vs Hugging Face: Founders, CEOs and History
ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dabkowski and is led by Mati Staniszewski. Hugging Face was founded in 2016 by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, Thomas Wolf and is led by Clément Delangue.
Company facts
ElevenLabs
- Founded
- 2022
- Headquarters
- London, United Kingdom & New York City, New York, United States
- Current CEO
- Mati Staniszewski
- Employees
- 800
Hugging Face
- Founded
- 2016
- Headquarters
- New York, New York, United States
- Current CEO
- Clément Delangue
- Employees
- 170
Founders
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…
Hugging Face
Clément Delangue
Clément Delangue is co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face. He led the company from its 2016 teen chatbot app to the open-source pivot and became one of the most visible advocates for open AI, including testimony to the US House Science Committee in June 2023.
Julien Chaumond
Julien Chaumond is co-founder and CTO of Hugging Face. He leads the engineering behind the Hub, the platform that stores and serves millions of model repositories and billions of downloads, and its developer-facing products.
Thomas Wolf
Thomas Wolf is co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Hugging Face. He wrote the 2018 PyTorch port of BERT that became the Transformers library, co-led the BigScience workshop that produced the 176B-parameter BLOOM model in 2022, and oversees the company's op…
CEOs and their tenures
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
Hugging Face
- Clément Delangue2016–present
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Led the 2018-2019 pivot from chatbot to open-source ML, raised about $400M through the 2023 Series D, and negotiated the $12.93B Nvidia acquisition agreed in September 2026.
Source - Julien Chaumond2016–present
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder
As CTO, he built the technical infrastructure that allowed the platform to host hundreds of thousands of AI models and datasets, creating the definitive 'GitHub of machine learning'.
Source - Thomas Wolf2016–present
Chief Science Officer & Co-Founder
He oversaw the massive open-science collaborative project BigScience, which successfully trained and released the BLOOM language model to democratize AI research.
Source
Timeline: ElevenLabs and Hugging Face side by side
2016Hugging Face
Hugging Face Founded
Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, and Thomas Wolf launched a chatbot app for teenagers, backed by a $1.2M seed round.
2018Hugging Face
PyTorch BERT Released
Thomas Wolf open-sourced pytorch-pretrained-bert, the start of the Transformers library.
2019Hugging Face
$15M Series A Led by Lux Capital
Funding to build open-source ML tools after dropping the chatbot app.
2021Hugging Face
$40M Series B and Gradio Deal
Series B led by Addition; acquired Gradio and launched Spaces.
2022ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs founded
Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski start the company to build expressive AI voice and dubbing.
2022Hugging Face
$100M Series C at $2B; BLOOM Released
Round led by Lux Capital; BigScience released the 176B-parameter BLOOM model.
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.
2023Hugging Face
$235M Series D at $4.5B
Backed by Salesforce Ventures, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, IBM, and Sound Ventures.
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.
2024Hugging Face
1 Million Models; Argilla and XetHub Acquired
The Hub passed 1 million public models; Hugging Face bought Argilla and XetHub. A Spaces secrets breach was disclosed in June.
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.
2025Hugging Face
Pollen Robotics Acquisition and Reachy Mini
Bought Pollen Robotics in April and launched the Reachy Mini robot in July; users, models, and datasets nearly doubled during the year.
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.
2026Hugging Face
3 Million Models; Nvidia Agrees to Buy for $12.93B
The Hub passed 3 million models in August; Nvidia signed a definitive acquisition agreement on September 2, expected to close in H1 2027.
Acquisitions
Hugging Face
- Pollen Robotics2025Undisclosed
- Argilla2024Undisclosed
- XetHub2024Undisclosed
- Gradio2021Undisclosed
Questions about ElevenLabs vs Hugging Face
Who is the CEO of ElevenLabs and Hugging Face, Inc.?
ElevenLabs is led by Mati Staniszewski and Hugging Face, Inc. is led by Clément Delangue. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was ElevenLabs founded vs Hugging Face, Inc.?
Hugging Face, Inc. was founded in 2016 — 6 years before ElevenLabs, which was founded in 2022. Hugging Face, 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 ElevenLabs have compared to Hugging Face, Inc.?
ElevenLabs employs approximately 800 people, while Hugging Face, Inc. employs approximately 170. ElevenLabs has the larger workforce at 800 employees, compared to Hugging Face, Inc.'s 170. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are ElevenLabs and Hugging Face, Inc. headquartered?
Both ElevenLabs and Hugging Face, Inc. are headquartered in United States. Their local rules and tax obligations may still differ.
Who founded ElevenLabs and Hugging Face, Inc.?
ElevenLabs was founded by Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dabkowski. Hugging Face, Inc. was founded by Clément Delangue, Julien Chaumond, Thomas Wolf.
Which company has a longer operating history — ElevenLabs or Hugging Face, Inc.?
Hugging Face, Inc. has been operating for approximately 10 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 ElevenLabs vs Hugging Face overview