Late last year, Stability AI Ltd., a startup based in London, was at the center of the AI hype cycle thanks to the massive success of Stable Diffusion, an artificial intelligence model that enables users to create uncanny and sometimes startlingly realistic images based on prompts of just a few words.
After raising more than $100 million, the company recruited a cadre of senior executives from larger technology firms as part of an ambitious plan to branch into new products and forge a viable business. Stability distinguished itself with its focus on open-source software, winning over experienced engineers and scientists from tech giants like Google, Amazon and Adobe, who saw making code public a better alternative to the closed AI models under development elsewhere. But with many other AI companies rushing their own models to market, Stability had to be fast.