ElevenLabs Hires Omnivore Team

An open-source read-it-later app called Omnivore was made by a team that was hired by the generative AI company ElevenLabs

Jack Harper and Hongbu Wu, co-founders of Omnivore, wrote on their blog that joining ElevenLabs would give them “an even larger platform to create accessible and engaging experiences for serious readers.”

There is a promise from ElevenLabs that the Omnivore script will stay 100% open-source for all users, Harper and Wu wrote. “This choice guarantees that other developers will be able to keep building on and improving Omnivore’s technology.”

Individuals who use Omnivore can save their information until November 16, after which it will be erased.

Harper and Wu started Omnivore in 2021 to make a way for “people who like text” to read something later. Harper was in charge of data tech at Juvo, a company that does credit scores, where Wu used to work.

Omnivore is a full-featured platform with web, iOS, and Android apps and tools for all major web browsers. It supports highlighting, PDFs, and working offline. Thanks to ElevenLabs’ voice creation API, text-to-speech is also available in Omnivore.

Harper and Wu wrote, “We got to know ElevenLabs by adding their very realistic AI voices to Omnivore.” “Even before we knew it, listening to books and articles with ElevenLabs voices was one of the most popular things about Omnivore.”

Harper and Wu say they will put their development time into ElevenReader, ElevenLabs’ reader app, now that they work for the company. They say they’ve already sent ElevenReader “valuable updates.” When ElevenReader came out earlier this year, it let users share articles, PDFs, and e-books and listen to them in different languages and voices, such as the voices of Judy Garland and James Dean.

Some of Omnivore’s features will likely make their way into ElevenReader.

“Our team is joining ElevenLabs to help shape the future of reading and listening that is easy for everyone with ElevenReader,” Harper and Wu said. “We’re working hard to ensure readers everywhere have a bright and easy future.”

ElevenLabs became a unicorn earlier this year after getting $80 million from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz. The company gets most of its money from AI tools that make fake voices for video dubbing into other languages and reading audiobooks. Backers have asked about a new round of funding that could put the company’s value at around $3 billion, TechCrunch reported this month.