Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder of ElevenLabs, the research company making audio accessible across languages and voices. He sits down with John to discuss the "voice Turing Test" and why AI has conquered text but still struggles with conversational speech. They discuss the future of human-computer interaction, including why we still can't get our phones to read a PDF properly and the massive potential for voice agents in everything from farming to healthcare. Mati also opens up about ElevenLabs’ rapid ascent to an $11 billion valuation and gives a behind-the-scenes look at how Ukraine is using their tech for digital government services.
Full transcript on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/cheekypint/p/the-world-of-voice-ai-with-mati-staniszewski
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2IHbGJJ...
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Key moments
00:00:27 How audio models work
00:08:52 ElevenLabs business model
00:17:50 The conversational Turing Test
00:21:01 Link by Stripe
00:26:02 Cascaded vs speech-to-speech
00:31:53 Universal translation
00:51:41 Designing an AI-native org
Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder of ElevenLabs, the research company making audio accessible across languages and voices. He sits down with John to discuss the "voice Turing Test" and why AI has conquered text but still struggles with conversational speech. They discuss the future of human-computer interaction, including why we still can't get our phones to read a PDF properly and the massive potential for voice agents in everything from farming to healthcare. Mati also opens up about ElevenLabs’ rapid ascent to an $11 billion valuation and gives a behind-the-scenes look at how Ukraine is using their tech for digital government services.
Full transcript on Substack: open.substack.com/pub/cheekypint/p/the-world-of-voice-ai-with-mati-staniszewski
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2IHbGJJ...
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Key moments
00:00:27 How audio models work
00:08:52 ElevenLabs business model
00:17:50 The conversational Turing Test
00:21:01 Link by Stripe
00:26:02 Cascaded vs speech-to-speech
00:31:53 Universal translation
00:51:41 Designing an AI-native org
