London-based Stability AI, which claims to be the world’s first community-driven, open-source artificial intelligence (AI) company, announced on Monday, October 17, that it has raised $101M (approximately €102.52M) in a fresh round of funding. As reported by Bloomberg, with this round the company has reached a post-money valuation of $1B.
The oversubscribed round was led by Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and O’Shaughnessy Ventures LLC.
Sri Viswanath, general partner at Coatue, says, “At Coatue, we believe that open-source AI technologies have the power to unlock human creativity and achieve a broader good. Stability AI is a big idea that dreams beyond the immediate applications of AI. We look forward to seeing what the world creates with Stability AI’s technology.”
Capital utilisation
Stability AI says it will use the funds to accelerate the development of open AI models for image, language, audio, video, 3D, and more, for consumer and enterprise use cases globally.
Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO of Stability AI, says, “AI promises to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. But we will only realise this potential if the technology is open and accessible to all. Stability AI puts the power back into the hands of developer communities and opens the door for groundbreaking new applications. An independent entity in this space supporting these communities can create real value and change.”
Building AI for the future
Founded in 2019 by Emad Mostaque, Stability AI is the first open-source, artificial intelligence (AI) company that claims to be developing breakthrough technologies for the benefit of humanity and the world.
The company’s goal is to create open-source AI projects by collaborating on research with leaders and subject-matter experts. These include researchers, engineers, developers, PhD candidates, and AI artists across multiple disciplines. Its current AI projects include text-to-image generation and model developments in language, learning, audio, and biology.
Stability AI says, “We believe that creativity promotes thriving and expands human potential. Our primary drive is to develop breakthrough ideas and convert them into practical solutions to build an inclusive, more communicative, creative future for everyone.”
Stability AI is the company behind Stable Diffusion, a free and open-source text-to-image generator that launched in August. Since its launch, Stable Diffusion has been downloaded and licensed by more than 200,000 developers globally.
The company’s consumer-facing product DreamStudio has also grown to well over a million registered users from more than 50 countries who collectively have created more than 170 million images.
