ElevenLabs launches in Canada, doubling its local team and opening a Toronto office

ElevenLabs formally launched its Canadian business on July 7, 2026, appointing a dedicated General Manager, committing to double its Canadian headcount this year, and opening its first Canadian office in Toronto, building on an existing base of 30,000 Canadian users.

What's new

ElevenLabs named Max Lemmens as General Manager for Canada. Lemmens previously guided complex enterprise deployments at Revolut and Klarna, and his mandate is to build out ElevenLabs' presence across the country rather than run it as a satellite of the US business. The company says it already has a team spread across Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, and plans to double that team's size before the end of the year while opening its first formal Canadian office in Toronto.

On the customer side, ElevenLabs points to an existing base of 30,000 users in Canada spanning individual creators up to national telecommunications companies — evidence the company is framing this less as a market-entry bet and more as a formal commitment following demand that already existed. Cofounder Mati Staniszewski framed the opportunity directly: "Canada has an exciting mix of technical talent and industries that could benefit from voice AI and conversational agents," adding, "We're seeing strong demand from Canadian businesses and we're building out the team locally to work even more closely with our customers."

The announcement also carries a note of local government backing: Ontario's Minister of Economic Development, Vic Fedeli, is quoted saying the province's "world-class AI talent and globally competitive technology sector continue to make our province a hub for tech companies," tying the launch to Ontario's broader push to attract AI investment.

Context

The launch is part of a broader pattern of ElevenLabs expanding its physical footprint alongside its product line this year — the company has also announced UK government partnerships, a California expansion adding roughly 170 jobs, and investment tied to its Poland operations, on top of shipping new ElevenCreative and ElevenAgents product features. Canada's own national AI strategy has set a target of growing enterprise AI adoption from roughly 12% today to 60% by 2034, giving voice-AI vendors like ElevenLabs a policy tailwind to point to when justifying local investment.

Why it matters

For a voice-AI company, local presence is not just symbolic — data residency, language and accent coverage (including Canadian French), and government/telecom procurement relationships often require an actual local entity and hires on the ground, not just API access sold from abroad. Naming national telcos among existing Canadian customers suggests ElevenLabs already has a foothold in exactly the kind of regulated, security-conscious buyer that a formal office and dedicated GM are meant to grow. It also puts ElevenLabs in more direct local competition with Microsoft, Google, and homegrown Canadian AI vendors, all of which have been courting the same enterprise AI adoption wave that Canada's national strategy is trying to accelerate.