from Hacker News

Key Stable Diffusion Researchers Leave Stability AI as Company Flounders

by muzz on 3/20/24, 4:00 PM with 133 comments

  • by blueblisters on 3/20/24, 4:50 PM

    SD3.0 looks really good and will probably displace a lot of closed image generation models once it's out.

    I don't understand why Stability gets so little support from the community. They released the first usable open-source models and their models are the foundation of the most interesting AI-bashing workflows out there - VC funded or otherwise.

  • by Octokiddie on 3/20/24, 9:52 PM

    I was looking for something about how the company actually made money, but only found this:

    > It’s a dramatic exodus that comes less than 18 months after Stability’s 2022 fundraise that valued the company at $1 billion. Now, the company is facing a cash crunch, with spending on wages and compute power far outstripping revenue, according to documents seen by Forbes. Bloomberg earlier reported that the company was spending $8 million a month. In November 2023, CEO Emad Mostaque tweeted that the company had generated $1.2 million in revenue in August, and would make $3 million in November. The tweet was later deleted.

    This sounds a lot like the two-year period leading up to the dot com crash. Insane valuations and no revenue model. Meanwhile those insanely-valued companies bought Sun Microsystems servers like there was no tomorrow. When the games ended, a lot of those insanely-valued companies went to zero and left a massive overhang of Sun hardware in their wake. Sun began its long nosedive not long after that.

  • by skadamat on 3/20/24, 5:05 PM

    This many people leaving and key investors resigning from the board is definitely interesting. I wonder if there's some undisclosed scandal that will break because this is pretty wild.

  • by SV_BubbleTime on 3/20/24, 4:21 PM

    Every Forbes article should have the warning that they are not real publication anymore. Everything they publish is written with an intention that you believe an authors opinion as fact.

    The model for Stability ends in a likely way, they will be swallowed up in a payday. We have recent examples of this.

    For now, they’re the most open area in a garden of closing gates. And I wish them all the best.

  • by ruleryak on 3/20/24, 4:38 PM

    Archived non paywall copy of the article: https://archive.is/iRIlp

  • by barapa on 3/20/24, 4:50 PM

    They should consider selling flounder

  • by uaserussia on 3/21/24, 1:34 AM

    How can we help save Stability AI?

  • by brcmthrowaway on 3/20/24, 4:21 PM

    The open source community should pitch in.. goFundMe

  • by singularity2001 on 3/20/24, 4:39 PM

    For my use cases OpenAI's DallE is often good enough. No more Discord nonsense.

  • by dreamcompiler on 3/20/24, 5:25 PM

    Of course the verb they're looking for is founders. A flounder is a fish. Founder (as a verb) means "to fail."

  • by __loam on 3/20/24, 4:19 PM

    Stability always seemed like a dark horse thanks to the reputation of their founder and their open source business model. I do get some schadenfreude from seeing them like this considering the damage many feel they've done to the art community.

    E: -4 in 10 minutes. Stay classy hackernews. I hope this company and OpenAI choke on the algorithmic disgorgement when the law catches up.