The CEO of Stability has resigned in the latest high-profile exit from the London-based AI startup.
Emad Mostaque has left the CEO role he held since founding Stability in 2019. He has also left the board of directors.
In a statement provided by Stability, Mostaque was said to have left to pursue decentralised AI, in which AI models are stored across geographies and not centrally controlled.
“On behalf of the board of directors, I want to thank Emad for his leadership and relentless commitment to Stability AI and the open source movement,” said Jim O’Shaughnessy, chairman of the board at Stability AI.
The company said it was actively conducting a search for a new permanent CEO. COO Shan Shan Wong and CTO Christian Laforte will run the company in the meantime as interim co-CEOs.
“Their complementary skill sets and experience ideally suit them for this role, giving us confidence in our future and in our ability to emerge from this period as a stronger company,” added O’Shaughnessy.
Mostaque said: “I am proud two years after bringing on our first developer to have led Stability to hundreds of millions of downloads and the best models across modalities.
“I believe strongly in Stability AI’s mission and feel the company is in capable hands. It is now time to ensure AI remains open and decentralised.”
Stability, known for its image generation platform Stable Diffusion, has become one of the UK’s most well-funded AI companies, currently valued at $1bn.
It has recently seen a handful of senior employees leave the company. Ed Newton-Rex, who led the audio generation team, quit the firm last November citing ethical issues with its policy to train models using copyrighted data.
Several other high-level staff, including one of Stable Diffusion’s original developers Robin Rombach, have left. Earlier this year, Stability quietly replaced Tom Mason as CTO.
Read more: Most generative AI models likely ‘illegal’, says former Stability VP
The post Stability AI CEO resigns amid senior staff exodus appeared first on UKTN.
