The funding comes as Stability AI faces financial difficulties, including a cash crunch and unpaid cloud bills. The company, which rose to prominence in 2022 with its image-generating AI model, Stable Diffusion, has also seen key talent depart and faces multiple copyright infringement cases. Despite these challenges, Parker has stated that the company will focus on growing its managed image, video, and audio pipelines and workflows, building custom enterprise models and content production tools, and delivering APIs to power consumer apps for art, graphic design, social media, and gaming.
Key takeaways:
- Stability AI, the startup behind Stable Diffusion, has raised new funding from investors including Greycroft, Coatue Management, Sound Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, O’Shaughnessy Ventures and angel investors Prem Akkaraju, Sean Parker, Eric Schmidt and Robert Nelsen. The amount raised was not disclosed.
- Sean Parker, Napster founder, has joined Stability AI as executive board chairman and Prem Akkaraju has been appointed as the company's CEO.
- The company, which was reportedly facing financial difficulties, has had some of its debt forgiven by new investors and has been released from future obligations amounting to $300 million, primarily owed to cloud computing providers.
- Despite facing multiple copyright infringement cases and losing key personnel, the company plans to focus on growing its managed image, video and audio pipelines and workflows, building custom enterprise models and content production tools, and delivering APIs to power consumer apps for art, graphic design, social media and gaming.