It was recently reported that Emad Mostaque, the CEO of Stability AI, is parting ways with the company behind the widely-used AI tool Stable Diffusion as he pursues interests in decentralized AI. The company confirmed his departure and simultaneous exit from the board of directors in a press release late Friday.
Stability AI, which is supported by investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue Management, does not have an immediate permanent successor for the top role. In the interim, the company has appointed COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte as co-CEOs while the search for a permanent CEO is underway.
Jim O’Shaughnessy, the chairman of the board, confirmed his confidence in Wong and Laforte's ability to continue the company's mission of developing and commercializing leading generative AI products.
Mostaque's decision to step down appears to be driven by a desire to ensure AI technology remains open and decentralized, a vision he feels is crucial to the future of AI. "Not going to beat centralized AI with more centralized AI. We should have more transparent & distributed governance in AI as it becomes more and more important," Mostaque remarked in a sequence of posts on X.
This announcement comes amidst a tumultuous week for AI startups, with Stability AI experiencing key developer resignations. The departure of three out of five original researchers behind Stable Diffusion adds to the company's challenges. Meanwhile, rival startup Inflection AI has seen notable staff movement to Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), including its co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and key employees.
"As AI grows, so will the interest in decentralized AI and the infrastructure that supports it. We welcome more seasoned AI founders and leaders to the intersection of Web 3 and AI, where we are pushing forward transparent and open access to AI for everyone while using blockchain technology to champion responsible AI," Ahmad Shadid, founder and CEO of AI focused compute DePIN io.net., told Investing.com.
Stability AI's flagship product, Stable Diffusion, is known for its text-to-image generation capabilities. The company recently introduced Stable Cascade, a new model available on GitHub for researchers, and launched a paid membership for commercial use of its models to support further research.
However, Stability AI's use of data for training Stable Diffusion has led to legal challenges, including an upcoming trial with Getty Images in the UK.