Stability AI Raises $101 Million For Open-Source AI Image Generation Software

Stability AI, billed as the world’s first community-driven, open-source artificial intelligence company, has secured $101 million in funding.

Details:

• Stability AI is the company behind Stable Diffusion, a powerful and free open-source text-to-image generator launched in August of this year. Since then, Stable Diffusion reports that it has been downloaded and licensed by more than 200,000 developers globally. The company’s consumer software Dreamstudio has amassed more than a million registered users who have generated more than 170 million images.
• While Stability AI isn’t an animation-focused company, plenty of artists have started to explore Stable Diffusion’s potential as an animation tool. Below are examples of recent Stable Diffusion animation experiments by Roope Rainisto, Robert Luxemburg, and Tim Hawkey.

• This oversubscribed round of funding was led by investment management company Coatue, private equity company Lightspeed Venture Partners, and asset management company O’Shaughnessy Ventures LLC. According to Stability AI, the funding will be used to “accelerate the development of open AI models for image, language, audio, video, 3d, and more, for consumer and enterprise use cases globally.” The company did not release a valuation, but Bloomberg reported the new cash infusion values the company at around $1 billion.
• “AI promises to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. But we will only realize this potential if the technology is open and accessible to all,” said Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO of Stability AI. “Stability AI puts the power back into the hands of developer communities and opens the door for ground-breaking new applications. An independent entity in this space supporting these communities can create real value and change.”