TL;DR
ElevenLabs has partnered with Stan Lee Universe to bring the late Marvel co-creator’s AI-generated voice and likeness to its platform. The deal puts Lee’s voice on the Iconic Marketplace for commercial licensing, launches a Stan Lee Book of the Month Club on Eleven Reader, and adds his likeness to Creative Templates.
ElevenLabs has struck a deal with Stan Lee Universe to add Stan Lee’s voice and likeness to its platform, making the late Marvel co-creator the latest deceased cultural icon to be digitally resurrected by AI. The partnership puts Lee’s voice on the ElevenLabs Iconic Marketplace for commercial licensing and on the Eleven Reader app, where fans can have him narrate any book. His likeness will appear on ElevenLabs Creative Templates, and two Stan Lee-inspired music filters are being released on ElevenCreative Music.
The voice was crafted from professional recordings of Lee, who died on 12 November 2018 at the age of 95. Stan Lee Universe is the joint venture between Genius Brands International and POW! Entertainment that controls Lee’s name, voice, likeness, and post-Marvel intellectual property.
A book club narrated by a dead man
The centrepiece of the deal is the Stan Lee Book of the Month Club, launching inside the Eleven Reader app. Each month, ElevenLabs will release a public domain classic narrated in Lee’s AI-generated voice, starting with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in June. The company says it will add one title per month for the next 12 months.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
The choice of public domain works is practical. It avoids the licensing complexity of narrating copyrighted books in a synthetic voice while giving ElevenLabs a recurring content programme tied to a recognisable name. Users can also select Lee’s voice to narrate any book in the Eleven Reader library, extending the partnership beyond the curated monthly picks.
Cameos, but make them AI
Lee’s likeness is coming to ElevenLabs Creative Templates, the company’s visual content generator. Users will be able to create images and videos featuring Lee in the spirit of the on-screen cameos that became his signature across decades of Marvel films. All personal use is non-commercial and governed by safety guidelines approved by both parties. Licensed commercial use of Lee’s likeness is available through the Stan Lee Universe team.
Two music Finetunes, Superhero Swells and Retro Hero Fanfare, round out the offering. These are music filters on ElevenCreative Music designed to evoke the aesthetic of Lee’s universe. They are available to all ElevenLabs users with no additional licensing required.
The consent-based model
The deal follows the consent-based licensing framework that ElevenLabs built when it launched its Iconic Marketplace in November 2025. The marketplace connects brands with rights holders for verified celebrity voices, including Michael Caine, Matthew McConaughey, Judy Garland, Burt Reynolds, John Wayne, and Liza Minnelli. ElevenLabs acts as an intermediary, handling licensing agreements and voice synthesis while ensuring that estates and rights holders retain control.
That framework matters because the alternative is already here. AI-generated songs have appeared on deceased artists’ streaming pages without estate or label approval, and unauthorised voice clones of public figures circulate freely. ElevenLabs is positioning its marketplace as the legitimate alternative, a model where the rights holders initiate and control the licensing rather than discovering their assets have been cloned without permission.
Chaz Rainey of Stan Lee Universe framed the partnership as a continuation of how Lee engaged with fans throughout his career. Lee was famous for meeting audiences wherever they were, whether in comic book pages, at conventions, or in his trademark movie cameos. The AI voice and likeness tools are pitched as the next iteration of that tradition.
A $11 billion bet on voice
ElevenLabs raised $500 million in a Series D round in February 2026, led by Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $11 billion. That was more than triple its previous valuation from a $6.6 billion employee tender offer in September 2025. The company closed 2025 at $330 million in annual recurring revenue and has raised $811 million in total funding.
The Stan Lee partnership is the latest in a series of high-profile deals that position ElevenLabs as the dominant platform for AI-powered digital afterlives. The Iconic Marketplace already hosts voices ranging from living celebrities like McConaughey and Caine to historical figures including Maya Angelou, Alan Turing, and Mark Twain. The company’s roster spans actors, athletes, scientists, and cultural icons.
Stan Lee Universe has been active in licensing Lee’s legacy since its formation in 2020. In May 2022, it signed a 20-year deal with Marvel Studios granting exclusive rights to use Lee’s name, voice, likeness, and signature in future films, television productions, and Disney theme parks worldwide. The ElevenLabs deal extends that licensing strategy into AI-generated content, a category that did not meaningfully exist when the Marvel deal was signed.
The uncomfortable question
The partnership will inevitably invite scrutiny. The ethics of AI-generated content remain contested, and putting a dead man’s voice and face into new creative contexts, no matter how carefully licensed, raises questions that consent frameworks alone cannot fully answer. Lee cannot approve what his AI likeness says or does. The rights holders can, and in this case they have, but the distance between estate approval and personal consent is a gap the industry has not resolved.
What ElevenLabs and Stan Lee Universe have built is the most commercially structured version of digital resurrection yet attempted for a pop culture figure of this stature. Whether that structure is sufficient to honour the legacy it claims to protect is a question that will follow every AI-generated cameo, every synthetic narration, and every licensed use of a voice whose owner is no longer here to hear it.
