Enterprise AI Finds its Voice: ElevenLabs and IBM Bring Premium Voice Capabilities to Agentic AI
Rhea-AI Summary
IBM (NYSE: IBM) and ElevenLabs announced an integration of ElevenLabs Text to Speech and Speech to Text into IBM watsonx Orchestrate on March 25, 2026. The collaboration brings premium voice quality across 70 languages and a library of 10,000+ voices, plus enterprise protections such as PCI, Zero Retention Mode, HIPAA support, and data residency.
The integration aims to enable voice-first, secure, scalable agentic AI experiences for customer support, sales, employee workflows and government services.
Positive
- 70 languages supported for multilingual voice interactions
- Access to a library of 10,000+ voices
- Enterprise-grade protections: PCI, Zero Retention Mode, HIPAA support and data residency
Negative
- Implementation outcomes and timelines are subject to change or withdrawal per company statement
News Market Reaction – IBM
In the Mar 25 session, IBM gained 0.33%, reflecting a mild positive market reaction.
Data tracked by StockTitan Argus on the day of publication.
Key Figures
Previous AI Reports
| Date | Event | Sentiment | 24h Move | Catalyst |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 23 | AI fan experience | Positive | +2.8% | Launched watsonx AI features for the 90th Masters to enhance fan insights. |
| Feb 25 | AI security report | Positive | +3.6% | Released X-Force Index detailing rising AI-driven attacks and enterprise security gaps. |
| Feb 24 | Voice AI partnership | Positive | +2.7% | Partnered with Deepgram to embed advanced voice capabilities into watsonx Orchestrate. |
| Feb 10 | AI storage launch | Positive | -1.6% | Introduced FlashSystem portfolio with agentic AI services and higher data efficiency. |
| Feb 04 | AI impact RFP | Positive | -1.8% | Opened global RFP for AI-driven social impact projects in work and education. |
24h Move is the share-price change in the day after each event; other market factors may also have contributed.
Recent AI announcements often saw positive next-day moves, though two of the last five produced negative reactions despite constructive product and initiative news.
Over recent months IBM has issued multiple AI-focused updates, from Masters Tournament digital experiences to security research, voice capabilities, autonomous storage, and an AI-focused impact accelerator. Three of the last five AI-tagged releases coincided with positive one-day moves above 2%, while two saw declines despite upbeat narratives. Today’s ElevenLabs integration continues the pattern of expanding watsonx Orchestrate’s role at the center of IBM’s enterprise AI and agentic workflows.
Key Terms
text to speech (tts) technical
speech to text (stt) technical
agentic ai technical
pci compliance regulatory
hipaa-compliant regulatory
data residency regulatory
zero retention mode technical
AI-generated analysis. How Rhea-AI works. Not financial advice.
ElevenLabs integration with IBM watsonx Orchestrate will help clients to deliver natural, multilingual conversational experiences at scale
Voice has become a critical medium for customer and employee-facing agentic AI workflows, but long wait times, rigid call flows and robotic-sounding voices can diminish the user experience. By integrating ElevenLabs' premium TTS technology, clients can build security and compliance-focused voice-enabled agents that communicate clearly and naturally, incorporating the nuance, emotion, and rhythm of human speech across 70 languages.
"AI agents are becoming central to everyday work, and voice is where AI either earns trust or loses it," said Mati Staniszewski, Co-founder at ElevenLabs. "Together with IBM, we're helping organizations replace robotic interactions with AI agents that people actually want to talk to, built with the security and compliance controls that enterprises require."
This integration expands agentic capabilities from text-based to voice-first interactions, offering organizations premium voice options that help them deliver more effective and human-centered AI experiences. Government agencies and services, for example, must support several languages to help their constituents with information about healthcare, human services, education, and civic activities. With the integration of ElevenLabs, AI phone agents can converse in 70 languages with multiple regional accents and voices. Additionally, banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and utilities can provide support to more communities across key cases including customer support, sales, employee experience and internal operations.
IBM watsonx Orchestrate is a unified platform that enables clients to build, deploy, manage and govern AI agents to help them automate workflows across their business. It connects to existing systems, models or automation tools allowing agent collaboration and providing a scalable foundation for trustworthy explainable enterprise AI. With this integration, clients building agents with IBM watsonx Orchestrate can access ElevenLabs' premium speech quality and extensive library of 10,000+ voices. Clients may also access enterprise-grade protections – including PCI compliance for secured payment processing, Zero Retention Mode designed to support HIPAA-compliant data handling and data residency. The combination helps to address the consistency, security and reliability needed for enterprise-scale deployments and supports high-volume and highly concurrent interactions across global user bases.
"We're bringing a voice to AI Agents in the enterprise. As clients increasingly deploy agentic AI that interacts with their customers and employees, they want these experiences to feel intuitive, responsive and accessible," said Nick Holda, Vice President, AI Technology Partnerships at IBM. "IBM's open ecosystem approach offers clients the flexibility to choose the models and tools that fit their business, and our integration of ElevenLabs into watsonx Orchestrate is a powerful example of that – enabling enterprises to deploy AI agents that sound natural, scale globally, and address security, reliability and governance."
ElevenLabs and IBM intend to continue their collaboration, helping enterprises move beyond text-only agents and towards voice-first, human centered AI experiences designed for the enterprise with the ability to scale.
Statements regarding ElevenLabs' and IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.
About ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs is an AI research and product company transforming how we interact with technology. We launched in January 2023 with the first human-like AI voice model. Today, we serve millions of users and thousands of businesses across three main platforms. ElevenAgents enables businesses to deliver seamless and intelligent customer experiences, with the integrations, testing, monitoring, and reliability necessary to deploy voice and chat agents at scale. ElevenCreative empowers creators and marketers to generate and edit speech, music, image, and video across 70+ languages. ElevenAPI gives developers access to our leading AI audio foundational models.
About IBM
IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.
Media contact:
Erica White
Ecosystem & AI Communications, IBM
erica.white@ibm.com
305-506-5929
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SOURCE IBM