ElevenLabs vs Mistral AI: Founders, CEOs and History
ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dabkowski and is led by Mati Staniszewski. Mistral AI was founded in 2023 by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothée Lacroix and is led by Arthur Mensch.
Company facts
ElevenLabs
- Founded
- 2022
- Headquarters
- London, United Kingdom & New York City, New York, United States
- Current CEO
- Mati Staniszewski
- Employees
- 800
Mistral AI
- Founded
- 2023
- Headquarters
- Paris, Île-de-France, France
- Current CEO
- Arthur Mensch
- Employees
- 1,000
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…
Mistral AI
Arthur Mensch
Arthur Mensch is co-founder and CEO of Mistral AI. He left Google DeepMind in 2023 to start the company and has led every funding round, from the ~$119 million (€105 million) seed in 2023 to the ~$3.39 billion (€3 billion) Samsung-led round in 2026.
Guillaume Lample
Guillaume Lample co-founded Mistral AI in 2023. As a highly elite AI researcher at Meta (where he helped lead the development of the massive LLaMA model), he realized that European startups were falling catastrophically behind Silicon Valley.
Timothée Lacroix
Timothée Lacroix co-founded Mistral AI in 2023. Also hailing from Meta's elite AI lab, he provided the absolutely critical engineering expertise required to efficiently train massive language models.
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
Mistral AI
- Arthur Mensch2023–present
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
As CEO, the former DeepMind researcher acts as the absolute face of European AI, heavily lobbying the EU to prevent catastrophic over-regulation of foundational AI models.
Source - Guillaume Lample2023–present
Chief Scientist & Co-Founder
As Chief Scientist, he ensures Mistral constantly punches massively above its weight class, competing directly with Google and OpenAI despite having a fraction of the compute budget.
Source - Timothée Lacroix2023–present
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder
As CTO, he oversees the massive scaling of Mistral's proprietary infrastructure, securing highly strategic cloud partnerships with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
Source
Timeline: ElevenLabs and Mistral AI side by side
2022ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs founded
Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski start the company to build expressive AI voice and dubbing.
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.
2023Mistral AI
Mistral AI Founded in Paris
Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix founded Mistral AI in Paris, raising a historic $113M seed round.
2023Mistral AI
Release of Mistral 7B via Magnet Link
Released Mistral 7B under Apache 2.0 via a viral torrent magnet link, outperforming all previous open models of its size.
2023Mistral AI
Invention of Mixtral 8x7B Sparse MoE
Unveiled Mixtral 8x7B, pioneering sparse mixture-of-experts architectures and outperforming GPT-3.5 across reasoning tasks.
2023Mistral AI
Series A Funding at $2.0B Unicorn Valuation
Raised $415 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed, reaching unicorn status in seven months.
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.
2024Mistral AI
Microsoft Alliance & Launch of Mistral Large
Announced partnership with Microsoft, integrating Mistral Large natively into the Azure Model Catalog alongside OpenAI.
2024Mistral AI
Launch of Codestral & Le Chat Multilingual Suite
Debuted Codestral for 80+ programming languages and launched Le Chat consumer and enterprise conversational assistant.
2024Mistral AI
Series B Funding at $6.0B Valuation Led by General Catalyst
Closed $640 million Series B round at a $6.0 billion valuation, led by General Catalyst with European industrial backers.
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.
2025Mistral AI
Series C Led by ASML
Mistral raised 1.7 billion euros in September 2025 in a round led by ASML at a valuation of 11.7 billion euros.
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.
2026Mistral AI
Crosses $100M ARR as Europe's Sovereign AI Champion
Achieved annualized revenue exceeding $100 million, powering European banking, logistics, and global cloud ecosystems.
Acquisitions
Mistral AI
- Koyeb2026Undisclosed
- Emmi AI2026Undisclosed
- Pimento2026Undisclosed
Questions about ElevenLabs vs Mistral AI
Who is the CEO of ElevenLabs and Mistral AI SAS?
ElevenLabs is led by Mati Staniszewski and Mistral AI SAS is led by Arthur Mensch. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was ElevenLabs founded vs Mistral AI SAS?
ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 — 1 year before Mistral AI SAS, which was founded in 2023. ElevenLabs's longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Mistral AI SAS.
How many employees does ElevenLabs have compared to Mistral AI SAS?
ElevenLabs employs approximately 800 people, while Mistral AI SAS employs approximately 1,000. Mistral AI SAS has the larger workforce at 1,000 employees, compared to ElevenLabs's 800. 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 Mistral AI SAS headquartered?
ElevenLabs is headquartered in United States and Mistral AI SAS is headquartered in France. Their different home markets mean they may face different regulatory frameworks, tax regimes, and currency exposure.
Who founded ElevenLabs and Mistral AI SAS?
ElevenLabs was founded by Mati Staniszewski, Piotr Dabkowski. Mistral AI SAS was founded by Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothée Lacroix.
Which company has a longer operating history — ElevenLabs or Mistral AI SAS?
ElevenLabs has been operating for approximately 4 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Mistral AI SAS has been in operation for around 3 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 Mistral AI overview