Written by丨Noah
出品 | 51CTO技术栈（微信号：blog51cto）
The AI painting track has always been crowded, and the free and open-source Wensheng diagram model Stable Diffusion is undoubtedly one of the best. Stability AI, one of the companies behind this star project, has also risen in value, and soon became a unicorn with a valuation of $1 billion.
However, after the explosion, Stability AI was frequently mired in controversy, first being "besieged" by art creators, accusing it of infringement, and then being attacked by partners one after another, pointing out that its exaggerated publicity "grabbed credit" and erased the efforts of many parties...... Recently, Stability AI has had another accident.
According to Forbes, key members of Stable Diffusion's core research team have resigned from Stability AI. The announcement was made by Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque at an all-hands meeting last week, which was confirmed by employees in attendance, as well as other sources familiar with the situation.
Previously, due to the reduction of cash reserves, Stability AI has seen a large-scale exodus of senior executives. Now, the departure of Stable Diffusion's core team is another blow to the startup. Let's take a look at the ins and outs of this incident and whether the controversy reflects the general plight of AI startups.
1. Tear up after the explosion: many efforts, one family?
The rapid popularity of the initial Stable Diffusion model ignited the enthusiasm of the AI painting community, and helped Stability AI raise more than $100 million from top investors Coatue and Lightspeed within days of the product launch.
But the problem is that under the high-profile publicity of Stability AI, Stable Diffusion has always been deeply tied to Stability AI, leading many people to think that this company is the owner of Stable Diffusion.
But in fact, the theoretical and technical basis of this model comes from a paper called High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models. The paper was actually presented at CVPR 2022 by five authors from the University of Munich, the University of Heidelberg, and Runway, an AI video editing technology startup.
Image
Seven months after the initial research paper was published, Mostaque provided the scholars with a batch of computational resources for further development of the model.
To put it simply, it can be understood that the research and development work from the basic paper to the model publication was carried out by the research teams of the University of Munich, the University of Heidelberg, and Runway. Stability AI's contribution is limited to paying for the official version of the training.
It can be said that several participants, including the University of Munich, the University of Heidelberg, Runway, Stability AI, etc., played an indispensable role in the launch of Stable Diffusion.
But the end result is that in the follow-up publicity and operation work around the entire Stable Diffusion project, Stability AI and its founder, Mostaque, have more or less exaggerated their own contribution and become the person who "picks peaches" in terms of actual interests.
Björn Ommer, a professor who oversaw the study, told Forbes directly that he believed that when Stability AI launched Stable Diffusion in August 2022, it misled the public about its contributions.
Three of the paper's five lead authors, Robin Rombach as team leader, and fellow researchers Andreas Blattmann and Dominik Lorenz, were hired by Stability AI. Since then, their research has enabled Stability AI to stay ahead of the technological development in the field of generative AI images.
However, the good times were short-lived, and the names of Rombach and his team are now on Stability AI's list of departures.
2. Behind the Mass Exodus of Executives: The Chaotic "Domination" of Crazy CEOs
Of course, the list has continued to grow over the past year. Some of the more well-known names include:
Christian Cantrell (Vice President of Product)
Scott Draves (工程)
Patrick Hebron（研发）
Joe Penna (Applied Machine Learning)
David Ha (Research Leader)
Stanislav Fort（LLM 部门主管）
Louis Castricato(Stanislav Fort的继任者)
Ed Newton-Rex (音频部门副总裁)
……
In addition, according to LinkedIn information, Stability AI has also lost a number of senior executives, including General Counsel Adam Avrunin, Chief Human Resources Officer Ozden Onder, Chief Operating Officer Ren Ito, and Vice President of Communications Jordan Valdés, all of whom have resigned within the past year.
The dramatic exodus comes less than 18 months after Stability AI reached a $1 billion valuation.
With competitors closing large funding rounds, Stability AI is also unable to raise a new round of funding at the desired valuation. Although the company said that it had no difficulties in financing, foreign media still disclosed that the company was facing a cash shortage, with salary expenses and computing power investment far exceeding revenue. Earlier, Bloomberg reported that the company spends up to $8 million a month.
In November 2023, Mostaque revealed on Twitter that the company generated $1.2 million in revenue in August and expects it to reach $3 million in November. However, the tweet was later deleted.
In addition to the cash shortage, CEO Mostaque's personal style has also been criticized.
As the CEO and co-founder of Stability AI, Mostaque is neither a developer nor an artist, with a background in a finance professional who worked in a hedge fund in London for 13 years. Despite his charisma and enthusiasm as an entrepreneur, some of Mostaque's statements were unconvincing to those he dealt with.
For example, he often makes high-pitched comments about partners and projects before the actual cooperation is negotiated, blurring the timeline, and showing a firm attitude towards these cooperations. In fact, many projects are only at the "negotiation" stage, and there is no follow-up.
In June 2023, Forbes published an article citing interviews with 13 current and former employees, as well as more than 20 investors, former colleagues and collaborators, accusing Mostaque of glorifying some of his past experiences and saying that the company's annualized revenue loss was more than $10 million he claimed.
When asked about the high turnover and the mass exodus of executives, Mostaque responded that this is a common situation for startups. This can especially happen when there is a lack of "cultural fit" between the employee and the company.
But more people describe Stability AI as a chaotic company run by an inexperienced CEO. The company's unique propositions and seemingly lofty promises that may not be able to deliver on them are the reason why some executives and technical engineers lose confidence and leave.
3. Investors leaving: Wake up from the AI frenzy
曾经看好Stability AI并不吝为其投资的风投机构也正在决然远去。
Investor Cougue has resigned from its board of directors, while Lightspeed Venture Partners resigned as an observer on the board of directors of Stability AI in October 2023.
Cougue had reportedly asked Mostaque to resign as CEO and pushed for the sale of the company. But a spokesperson for the company said that "the leadership and management of our CEO is critical to Stability's success" and that the company is not looking to sell.
However, also in 2023, Stability AI got a lifesaver. Intel led the $50 million cash injection into Stability AI in the form of convertible bonds, according to people familiar with the matter, and the cash injection comes at a critical time for the company. Previously, Forbes reported that Stability AI has tried to raise $400 million from a range of major investors several times over the past year.
After that, Stability AI sold it to AI startup Jasper in February of this year, less than a year after acquiring image generation and editing platform Clipdrop. The company, which bills itself as an advocate for the open-source AI community, also launched paid tiers for commercial users of its tools last December, starting at $20 per month.
Behind Stability AI's search for ways to save itself, the optimism surrounding Stability AI's prospects is fading. Investors' "blind faith" to the AI boom is gradually changing.
The recent collapse of Inflection AI is further evidence of the over-ambition of the venture capital world. The startup, which has raised billions of dollars in funding after only two years of existence, is also experiencing a large exodus of talent, with two of its co-founders and several employees joining Microsoft.
Manish R Jain commented on X: "They didn't have revenue, they didn't find a product-market fit, and they didn't have anything to back up their valuation. They just came up with the right idea at the right point in time. ”
4. The house leak coincided with overnight rain: infringement disputes and data scraping disputes came one after another
According to Forbes, Stability is not only struggling with paying wages and payroll taxes, but it is also facing a significant expense in dealing with a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a group of artists. These plaintiffs allege that Stability used their artwork and stock photos to train their models without permission. Today, the lawsuit is still ongoing.
In addition, earlier this month, Midjourney banned all employees of Stability AI from using its platform. Midjourney alleges that Stability AI employees scraped data from its platform in early March, causing a nearly 24-hour service outage.
Image
Mostaque responded to Midjourney's allegations on X. He said he was investigating the matter and denied that Stability AI ordered the scraping of the data. Mostaque noted that Stability AI has its own dataset and does not need to get data from Midjourney's platform.
Midjourney founder David Holz refuted Mostaque's claims on X, saying he had provided Mostaque with information to help him with his internal investigation.
The two are in conflicting statements, and it's unclear if Stability AI employees actually scraped data from Midjourney. However, ethical questions about data collection and use continue around this incident.
5. Write at the end
The departure of the core team of Stable Diffusion has made the future of Stability AI full of uncertainty. "Hopefully Stability AI will survive this, after all, Stable Diffusion is really cool. This is the message of enthusiastic netizens under the discussion of related events.
From the perspective of the development history of Stability AI, its predicament is not only a pain, it reflects that the entire AI industry is developing rapidly, but also facing challenges in terms of capital turnover, talent retention, and business model innovation in addition to technology.
"Don't want to make mistakes in the past, and follow the track of repetition", this is also a wake-up call for other AI companies, reminding them not only to pursue technological innovation, but also to remember their original intentions and pay attention to the company's sustainable development and internal management. In this way, it can still stand tall after the AI frenzy has receded.
Reference Links:
https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/usstock/c/2023-08-09/doc-imzfrhpt7537024.shtml
https://medium.com/generative-ai-art/midjourney-bans-stability-ai-employees-0fd9a21e17f3
Hatpas://vv.ithome.com/0/649/048.Hatma
Source: 51CTO Technology Stack