Stable AI CEO resigns because you can’t beat centralized AI with more centralized AI

Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque said late Friday that the company has resigned from its top job and from the unicorn startup’s board of directors, making it the second hot artificial intelligence startup to undergo major changes this week. company.

Stability AI, which is backed by investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Coatue Management, did not immediately name a permanent replacement for the CEO position but has named its chief operating officer Shan Shan Wong and chief technology officer Christian Laforte as interim co-executives. CEO. A blog post.

Stability AI, which has lost six key talent in recent quarters, said Mostaque will step down to pursue decentralized artificial intelligence. In a series of posts by X, Mostaque think You can’t beat “centralized AI” with more “centralized AI,” referring to the ownership structures of top AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic.

He also assertive Since he holds the largest controlling stake, he decided to step down from the top job. “As artificial intelligence becomes more and more important, we should have more transparent and decentralized governance of artificial intelligence. It is [sic] It’s a difficult problem, but I think we can solve it…” he added. “The concentration of power in artificial intelligence is bad for all of us. I have decided to resign to address issues in the stabilization department and elsewhere.”

Mostaque’s departure from Stability AI, a startup best known for its popular image generation tool Stable Diffusion, comes amid continued troubles for the startup, which as of October 2023 was less than Monthly expenses are estimated at $8 million, and the company also noted that the startup had tried unsuccessfully to raise new funding at a $4 billion valuation.

About a year ago, Mostaq didn’t appear to be prioritizing revenue growth. In an article published last year on Breakthrough.” He cited several examples, including Magic Leap, which spent billions of dollars before generating revenue.

“The returns from proper generative AI R&D are clearer and coming to market faster than anything we have seen. For example, it will create more economic value than self-driving cars, for which total investment has reached 100 billion for no revenue in return,” he wrote.

His comments on Reddit last month provide insight into the shift in focus. “We have done well this year and have exceeded expectations. Our goal is to be cash flow positive this year and I think we can achieve that goal sooner rather than later,” he wrote.

“The market is huge, and edge industries and all regulated industries need open models. That’s why we are one of the only companies to open up data, code, training run details, etc. Custom models, consulting, etc. are huge markets and very A sound business model as we’ll be moving into enterprise adoption in the next year or so, last year was just a test.”

The release of Stability AI caps off a remarkable week for the artificial intelligence industry. Inflection AI, a startup that has raised about $1.5 billion in funding, announced on Monday that two of its co-founders and several other employees have joined Microsoft, which led the startup’s latest funding round.