ElevenLabs and IBM announced on March 25 a new collaboration to integrate ElevenLabs’ Text to Speech (TTS) and Speech to Text (STT) technologies into IBM watsonx Orchestrate, an agentic artificial intelligence orchestration platform. The partnership aims to help clients deliver more natural voice interactions while meeting enterprise security and scalability requirements.
Voice technology is becoming increasingly important in customer and employee-facing AI workflows. However, challenges such as long wait times, inflexible call flows, and robotic-sounding voices can negatively affect user experience. By incorporating ElevenLabs’ premium TTS solution, organizations will be able to create voice-enabled agents that communicate with 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.”
The integration expands agentic capabilities from text-based interfaces toward more advanced voice-first interactions. This development enables government agencies to support multiple languages for constituents seeking information about healthcare, education, or civic activities. Banks, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and utilities can also extend support across communities for customer service or internal operations using these tools.
IBM watsonx Orchestrate allows clients to build and manage AI agents that automate business workflows by connecting existing systems or automation tools. With the addition of ElevenLabs technology—including a library of over 10,000 voices—clients gain access to enterprise-grade protections such as PCI compliance for payment processing and Zero Retention Mode designed for HIPAA-compliant data handling.
“We’re bringing a voice to AI Agents in the enterprise,” said Nick Holda, Vice President of AI Technology Partnerships at IBM. “IBM’s open ecosystem approach offers clients the flexibility to choose the models and tools that fit their business… enabling enterprises to deploy AI agents that sound natural, scale globally, and address security reliability and governance.”
Both companies plan further collaboration aimed at moving beyond text-only solutions toward scalable human-centered voice experiences for businesses.
