Generative AI company ElevenLabs has acquired the team behind Omnivore, an open-source “read-it-later” app that has gained popularity among avid readers. This move, announced by Omnivore co-founders Jackson Harper and Hongbo Wu in a recent blog post, provides them with “a broader platform to develop engaging experiences for serious readers.”
The transition comes with a commitment from ElevenLabs to maintain Omnivore’s open-source codebase, ensuring that developers can continue to access and expand upon the technology. “By keeping Omnivore fully open-source, the development community can further build on and refine its capabilities,” Harper and Wu noted. Existing Omnivore users will have until November 16 to export their data before it’s permanently deleted.
Omnivore was founded in 2021 as a feature-rich read-it-later app for readers who appreciate well-designed text-based resources. Alongside web, iOS, and Android apps, Omnivore offers essential features like highlighting, PDF and offline support, and browser extensions. It also provides text-to-speech functionality, powered by ElevenLabs’ voice generation API, which introduced ultra-realistic AI voices as a favorite feature among Omnivore’s user base.
The connection between Omnivore and ElevenLabs first emerged when Omnivore integrated ElevenLabs’ advanced AI voices, making it possible to listen to articles and e-books in lifelike voices. Now that Harper and Wu have joined ElevenLabs, they’re dedicating their efforts to ElevenReader, ElevenLabs’ proprietary reader app launched earlier this year. Already, the Omnivore team has implemented key updates to ElevenReader, which allows users to upload articles, PDFs, and e-books to be read aloud in various languages and voices, including the iconic voices of actors like Judy Garland and James Dean.
While the full integration of Omnivore’s capabilities into ElevenReader may take time, Harper and Wu are optimistic. “Joining ElevenLabs enables us to pioneer the future of accessible reading and listening with ElevenReader,” they shared, underscoring their ongoing commitment to creating enriching reading tools.
ElevenLabs, which recently achieved unicorn status with an $80 million investment from firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, focuses on AI-driven synthetic voice technology for audiobook narration and multilingual video dubbing. The company is reportedly being courted by investors for an additional funding round that could elevate its valuation to around $3 billion.
