The Megadeals Behind Europe’s AI Billionaire Boom

On Wednesday, AI voice startup ElevenLabs announced it had completed a $300 million employee share sale that doubled its valuation to $22 billion. Its Polish cofounders Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, each of whom hold an estimated 15% stake each, are now worth $3.3 billion apiece, up from $1.6 billion earlier this year.

High school friends Staniszewski and Dabkowski grew up watching poorly dubbed films. Those films were in part what led them in 2022 to quit their jobs at Palantir and Google, respectively, and to pool their savings to start ElevenLabs, which uses AI as a better alternative than drab voiceovers. Today, the New York and London-based startup says enterprises like Klarna and Revolut account for 55% of its revenue. In December, the company had nearly $200 million in trailing 12-month revenue, Forbes reported. It’s likely on track to double its revenue this year, and its AI agents now handle 15 million conversations each week.

They are just the latest European founders whose fortunes have soared in recent months, thanks to a flurry of megadeals and big fundraising rounds that have helped put Europe’s back in the AI race. In the past five months, eight new billionaires have emerged and another six have seen their fortunes swell.

Kicking off a busy summer of AI deals was Berlin-based software startup n8n, which helps businesses automate their workflows using more than 12,000 templates. In May, the startup snagged a strategic investment from SAP, doubling its valuation to $5.2 billion. It was enough to make its CEO and founder Jan Oberhauser a new billionaire with an estimated 45% stake worth $2.3 billion, according to German corporate filings. Oberhauser did not respond to Forbes’ request for comment.

In mid-August, Sweden’s Lovable closed a bumper new fundraise of $400 million that valued the AI-powered website app builder at over $13.3 billion. That lifted the shareholding of its cofounders Anton Osika and Fabin Hedin to $3.1 billion each.