ElevenLabs CTO on AI agents reshaping work

ElevenLabs CTO bullish on AI agents

Alex Holt, chief technology officer at ElevenLabs, believes AI agents represent a major opportunity for the voice AI startup to automate work across the business.

Sales agent handles three thousand leads

ElevenLabs deployed an inbound sales development representative agent that handled over three thousand customer leads this year, qualifying over ninety percent of those potential clients in thirty two different languages without human intervention.

Agents assist across multiple functions

Another AI agent coaches new sales team members through role-play customer interactions for faster onboarding. A recruiting agent conducts first-round interviews with job candidates. Slack agents answer employee questions about internal processes.

Holt sees bigger gains ahead

Holt says the efficiency gains ElevenLabs reaps from agentic AI may feel cutting edge today, but in six months time, the company can see even more gains.

“I think what's most exciting about this space is that you know you always feel like you're on the tip of the iceberg.”

Agentic AI share of value growing

Agentic AI's share of total AI value grew from seventeen percent in twenty twenty five to twenty two percent this year, according to research by consulting firm BCG, and is projected to reach thirty nine…

Businesses unprepared for multi-agent work

Most surveys find that businesses are ill-prepared to rethink workflows and orchestrate multi-agent processes, in which one agent autonomously passes along work to another.

ElevenLabs employees build their own agents

Most employees at ElevenLabs work collaboratively with agents and a majority have even built their own agents to help handle repetitive tasks within the company.

Business metrics remain unchanged

ElevenLabs' core business objectives do not change with AI. Sales teams are expected to use AI to generate more revenue at a faster pace. Customer service satisfaction scores are closely monitored.

“It's exactly the same business metrics. This has to be an initiative that the business units themselves are driving and pushing.”

Engineers embedded in every team

ElevenLabs has deployed an engineer to sit on every team across the business, and every group has fewer than ten people.

AI screens almost all job candidates

Almost all prospective candidates are initially screened by an AI recruiter when applying for a role at ElevenLabs, freeing human recruiters to spend time convincing candidates to join.

“That's thirty minutes that the recruiter can spend at the end of the process, convincing you to join.”

Holt's path to CTO role

Holt joined ElevenLabs in September twenty twenty three as an engineer after spending five years at software and data analytics company Palantir Technologies. He was elevated to the CTO role in June twenty twenty six.

ElevenLabs doubles valuation to twenty two billion

Three months after Holt became CTO, ElevenLabs announced that it doubled its valuation to twenty two billion dollars.

Multi-agent systems are next frontier

The next frontier for agentic AI, says Holt, is to put more effort into multi-agent systems, enabling greater shared context and more complex work handoffs between multiple agents.

Customer closes sale through two agents

One ElevenLabs customer was able to close a sale entirely through an interaction with two agents. The SDR agent fielded the inbound request, and an account executive agent handled the legal documents and contracts.

Automating simple, repetitive cases

Holt says the value of multi-agent handoffs is automating the whole chain for customers where it is the simple, most repetitive mechanical cases, freeing employees to handle complex inbound requests or upselling.

“The value of that is you can now automate that whole chain for customers where it's the simple, most repetitive mechanical cases.”

Measuring agent impact takes time

Holt says embracing agentic AI at this magnitude requires patience. Questions like whether the recruiting agent is hiring the right people or whether customer service scores are improving can take a long time to answer.

“Some of these metrics can take a long time. We lean on the business owners to identify those leading indicators and the metrics we should be measuring.”

Agents can act in unintended ways

There are instances where AI can act in unintended ways, an issue raised by recent high-profile instances in which OpenAI and Anthropic agents went rogue.

ElevenLabs monitors agents with human oversight

ElevenLabs has created a human-led monitoring and observation layer to govern its agents. One customer service agent erroneously gave a small refund under thirty dollars and failed to escalate the issue, but ElevenLabs created a…

Agent tracking reveals hidden insights

Holt says tracking every decision an agent makes can be helpful.If a human made the same mistake, the company likely would not have noticed.Agentic AI allows companies to collect more data and optimize processes.

“It's not just automating processes; it allows you to collect more data. I expect over the next few years, the trend that we're going to start seeing is people talking much more about optimizing these processes.”