Emad Mostaque is stepping down as CEO of Stability AI, the startup that helped make Stable Diffusion a reality. In a press release late Friday night, Stability AI said Mostak was leaving the company “to pursue decentralized AI.” Mr. Mostak will also step down from his position on Stability AI's board of directors.
The board has appointed two interim co-CEOs to lead Stability AI, COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte, while conducting a search for a permanent CEO. “While we search for a permanent CEO, we are confident that in their roles as interim co-CEOs, Xiang Xiang Wong and Christian Laforte will successfully guide the company in the development and commercialization of industry-leading generative AI products. “I'm doing it,” Jim said. Mr. O'Shaughnessy, Chairman of the Board of Stability AI.
The company's efforts to develop commercialized AI products are likely a major reason for Mostak's resignation. “More centralized AI cannot beat centralized AI,” Mostak said in the article. Post to X, following his resignation. “The time has come to ensure that AI remains open and decentralized,” Mostak said in a separate statement.
There was a lot of drama in the AI startup world this week.
Mr. Mostak's resignation was several days later. forbes We reported that Stability AI has fallen on hard times as other key developers have resigned. Three of the five researchers who originally developed the technology behind Stable Diffusion recently left the company. Stability AI's leadership change also comes in the same week that rival startup Inflection AI experienced what was effectively a Microsoft acquisition.
Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google DeepMind and former CEO of Inflection AI, joined Microsoft earlier this week as CEO of the new AI team. Microsoft also hired several key employees for Inflection AI, including co-founder Karén Simonyan, who currently serves as Chief Scientist for Microsoft AI. Most of Inflection's staff will join Microsoft AI, and the AI startup will focus on enterprise products.
Stability's flagship AI product, Stable Diffusion, is used by many to provide text-to-image generative AI tools. Stability released its latest model, Stable Cascade, as an option for researchers on GitHub a few weeks ago. Stability AI also began offering paid memberships for commercial use of its models in December to help fund research.
Stability AI popularized the AI Stable Diffusion method, but is facing a lawsuit over the data on which Stable Diffusion was allegedly trained. A lawsuit brought by Getty Images is set to go to court soon in the UK, potentially marking a major turning point in the legal framework surrounding generative AI products.