WellSaid Labs Refines Enterprise Focus with New AI Voice Platform

In the evolving landscape of AI voice technology, Bellevue-based WellSaid Labs is charting a distinctive path focused on ethical practice and enterprise solutions. The company unveiled a significant upgrade to its text-to-speech platform this week, featuring the redesigned Studio software and next-generation Caruso voice model. This release represents a strategic commitment to serving business customers in regulated industries, emphasizing improved workflows, superior audio quality, and enhanced controls. As Chief Product and Technology Officer Chris Johnson articulated, “We put our stake in the ground in being the best solution for enterprises in the market.” The company’s deliberate approach stands in contrast to competitors who have generated headlines—sometimes controversially—with more accessible consumer offerings. This pivotal product launch culminates years of internal research aimed at refining WellSaid’s position as a trusted provider for institutional users.

WellSaid’s business model reflects a fundamental ethical stance that differentiates it in the crowded AI voice marketplace. Unlike open voice-generation models that scrape publicly available data without clear consent, WellSaid builds its technology exclusively on licensed recordings from voice actors who receive ongoing royalties. This closed-model approach has particular appeal in sectors where privacy, intellectual property, and regulatory compliance are paramount—healthcare, legal, and financial services among them. Current enterprise clients include recognizable names like LinkedIn, T-Mobile, ServiceNow, and Accenture. CEO Benjamin Dorr emphasized this connection between ethics and business advantage: “Every voice is connected to a real person, and that person receives royalties from the revenue that’s generated on WellSaid. The things we do right by our voice actors allow us to do right by the enterprises that choose us, and I don’t think everyone else can say that.”

The company’s trajectory since spinning out of Seattle’s AI2 Incubator in 2019 reflects both the promise and challenges of building an AI business focused on responsible innovation. WellSaid employs approximately 70 people—slightly fewer than last year—and has experienced leadership transitions, with three CEOs in under two years. Despite these organizational shifts, the company has maintained its focus on developing technology that balances remarkable capability with ethical constraints. WellSaid gained public recognition in 2023 when NPR’s Planet Money used its technology to create an eerily accurate synthetic version of former host Robert Smith’s voice, demonstrating both the impressive fidelity of its voice models and raising questions about the implications of such technology.

WellSaid’s behind-the-scenes approach has sometimes left it overshadowed in industry conversations dominated by flashier competitors like ElevenLabs, which has attracted attention partly through controversy over misuse of its technology to create unauthorized voice clones of public figures. This positioning challenge reflects a broader pattern among enterprise AI companies, particularly those in the Seattle region, which often prioritize trust, governance, and regulatory compliance in a technology landscape where headline-generating experiments and consumer applications tend to capture public imagination. The company’s omission from a recent CB Insights market map of leading voice-AI startups highlights this visibility challenge, though executives indicate they’re working to address such oversights.

The latest platform upgrade represents WellSaid’s commitment to its core enterprise strategy despite the allure of more attention-grabbing approaches. The new Studio software and Caruso voice model deliver improvements that specifically address the needs of business users operating in complex organizational environments. These enhancements focus on workflow integration, audio quality, and precise control—features particularly valuable to large organizations with specific compliance requirements and professional standards. Johnson described the release as “a pivotal moment for the company,” emphasizing that the innovations are designed specifically to enhance the company’s position as the premier enterprise solution in the market.

As the AI voice technology sector continues to mature, WellSaid’s strategic bet is that its more judicious approach will ultimately prove more sustainable and valuable than competing models that may generate more immediate attention but potentially face greater regulatory and ethical challenges. The company’s focus on working with authentic voice talent, respecting intellectual property, and designing for enterprise requirements positions it distinctively in a rapidly evolving marketplace. While this path may not generate the same level of public fascination as some alternatives, WellSaid’s leadership is banking on the proposition that building trust with both voice creators and enterprise customers will yield long-term business advantages. As voice AI capabilities continue to advance, the tension between innovation velocity and responsible deployment that WellSaid embodies will likely remain a defining feature of the industry landscape.