Stability AI, a generative AI startup, has announced the appointment of a new CEO, Prem Akkaraju, months after the departure of its founder and former CEO, Emad Mostaque. The news was reported by The Information but Stability AI declined to comment on the report. Akkaraju, who previously served as the CEO of visual effects company Weta Digital, will now take the reins at Stability AI.
Mostaque resigned from his position in March amid concerns from investors about the financial viability of the company. However, Stability AI has continued to improve its Stable Diffusion text-to-image generative AI technology, releasing Stable Diffusion 3 Medium on June 12, which is the fastest and most performant version of their text-to-image generation models.
In May, a Reuters report revealed that Stability AI had incurred a loss of over $30 million in the first quarter of the year, with revenue of less than five million. The report also stated that Stability AI was seeking outside investment. The recent announcement of a cash infusion from an investor group led by Sean Parker suggests that Stability AI is taking steps to address its financial challenges.
While Stability AI faces increasing competition in the image generation space from companies like OpenAI, they have diversified their offerings beyond just image generation. They have developed Stable Code, a code model, and Stable LM, a text large language model with multiple model sizes. They are also active in the audio and video domains with Stable Audio 2.0 and Stable Video 3D.
Underpinning their AI models is an updated business model that includes a membership option for commercial use and an API for organizations to access the technology based on usage. Stability AI also offers some of its model weights under a non-commercial license.
Meanwhile, Mostaque is working on a new venture called Schelling AI, which aims to advance his vision for decentralized AI. Details about Schelling AI are still scarce, but Mostaque has hinted that more information will be revealed in July.
Overall, with the appointment of a new CEO and a cash infusion from investors, Stability AI is taking steps to address its financial challenges and continue advancing its AI technology in various domains. The company’s diversified offerings and updated business model position them well in the competitive AI market.