Most small business software still expects you to sit at a desk and click. We've been building Octabiz around a different idea: you should be able to talk to your business software and have it do the work. That's why I'm happy to share that Octabiz has joined the ElevenLabs Grants Program.
ElevenLabs runs the voice behind a lot of what Octabiz does: the phone agents that answer and call your customers, live translation in meetings, narrated blog posts, and voiceovers in our automations. The grant gives us room to bring that voice to more Octabiz businesses, faster.
In short
The short version
Octabiz is now part of the ElevenLabs Grants Program for AI voice startups.
The grant includes 12 months of access to the full ElevenLabs platform and 33 million characters of voice.
Every speech feature in Octabiz now runs on Eleven v4, ElevenLabs' newest and most expressive voice model.
We're using the grant to put a voice agent within reach of every Octabiz business, not only the ones that already use one.
What the grant is
The ElevenLabs Grants Program supports early-stage companies building products powered by AI voices. Grantees get twelve months of access to the full ElevenLabs platform, including 33 million characters of usage, which ElevenLabs puts at more than 680 hours of agent conversations. Grantees also get access to ElevenLabs' founder community and startup support.
For a company our size, that matters. Voice is the part of the product our customers notice most, and it's also the part we most want to offer without making people think about the cost of every minute.
Octabiz on ElevenLabs today
- 99.2%
- of 637 production voice requests succeeded
- 197 ms
- median start for live transcription sessions
- 100%
- of agent phone calls transcribed and saved to the customer record
How Octabiz uses ElevenLabs
If you've used Octabiz in the last few months, you've probably already heard ElevenLabs without knowing it.
Where you hear it
- 1
Phone agents
Sales, support, booking and general assistant agents answer and place calls, look up customers, find booking times and log the next step on the customer record.
- 2
Live translation
The meeting assistant translates what someone says into another language, out loud, while they're still talking.
- 3
Content Studio
Automations write the script, then ElevenLabs generates the voiceover, a music bed and the sound effects for short product films.
- 4
Narrated blog
Posts on this blog can be read aloud in a house voice, with a read-along transcript that highlights each word as it's spoken.
We also just moved every one of these features to Eleven v4: eleven_v4 for narration and voiceovers, eleven_v4_turbo for anything live, like phone calls and translation. For you, that means more natural voices with more expression across every part of Octabiz, plus fast replies on calls.
What we're doing with it
Before the grant
A phone agent was something you set up once you were sure it was worth it. Voice features were rationed to the places where they paid off most.
With the grant
Every Octabiz business can try a voice agent on real calls. Narration, voiceovers and translation become everyday features, not special occasions.
Concretely, over the next six months we're working toward:
- A phone agent for every business that wants one. Today a handful of Octabiz businesses run live agents. We want that to be 100+ by mid-2027.
- More calls handled end to end. About three in four agent calls complete without anyone stepping in. We're aiming for 85%.
- Bookings from calls. Agents can now book the caller straight into your calendar. Our goal is one booking for every five calls.
- A voice for every post. Every new article on this blog gets narration by default.
These are goals, not promises, and I'll report back on how close we get.
The goal is that a business owner never has to open a menu to get something done. ElevenLabs is how Octabiz talks back.
Thank you, ElevenLabs
Thank you to the ElevenLabs team for backing Octabiz. Building a whole business platform with a small team means choosing carefully which parts to build ourselves. Voice is one we were glad not to have to build from scratch.
If you run a small business and want to hear what this sounds like, the fastest way is to try it.
Hear your business talk back
Set up a voice agent in a few minutes and give it a real call.
Common questions
Where this came from
The research, methods, and photos behind this article.
Sources cited
- 1.ElevenLabs Grants Program details from elevenlabs.io/startup-grants, November 2026
- 2.Octabiz production figures from our AI usage analytics and call logs, May to November 2026
- 3.Elevenlabs — ElevenLabs Grants Program