British startup Stability AI has secured funding from previous backers Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners and confirmed the appointment of Prem Akkaraju as CEO.
Stability has raised “about $80m”, Reuters reported, providing a much-needed capital injection into the company known for its image generation platform Stable Diffusion.
Other institutional investors participating in the “initial round” of investment include Greycroft, Sound Ventures and O’Shaughnessy Ventures.
Tech figures including former Facebook president Sean Parker and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt also provided investment.
Stability has confirmed that Akkaraju, the former boss of visual effects company Weta Digital, will take the role of chief executive with immediate effect.
“Stability AI is the backbone of the visual AI ecosystem,” said Akkaraju. “The company’s world-class team, breakthrough models and unique developer network attracted me to take on the CEO role.
“We will continue to release the most cutting-edge open models for the community, while meeting the overwhelming demand for AI solutions from large-scale corporations.”
Parker, who joins the Stability board as executive chairman, said he’s “committed to the open-source principles that Stability AI was built upon”.
He added: “This investment will enable the creation of even more powerful models and allow the community to continue pushing the boundaries of human creativity.”
Emad Mostaque, the company’s founding CEO, resigned in March to pursue “decentralised” AI.
Mostaque’s exit followed a flurry of departures from Stability, including Ed Newton-Rex, who led the audio generation team. Newton-Rex quit the firm last November citing ethical issues with its policy to train models using copyrighted data.
Last month Stability laid off 10% of staff in a bid to reduce costs. Stability previously raised $101m in 2022 at a valuation of around $1bn. According to Dealroom, Stability AI’s total funding now stands at $231m.
Stable Diffusion has been downloaded over 150 million times. Its most recent release, Stable Diffusion 3, has been downloaded over two million times since its launch earlier this month.
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