Imad Mossadegh, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Stability AI
© 2022 Bloomberg Finance LP
Imad Mossadegh, the founder of Satsat AI, plans to step down as CEO of the generative AI startup. Forbes have learned.
Mustaq revealed his plans privately to industry colleagues earlier this week at the Abundance360 conference in Los Angeles, where he was a speaker, according to three people he spoke to directly. Stability, the company best known for the image generator Stable Diffusion, has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Mustaq’s decision to step down as CEO of the company he founded is based on employee dissatisfaction, which coincides with the departure this month of key researchers behind one of Stability’s most popular offerings, the text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion. A new peak has been reached. That same week, Tyler Saltsman, head of strategic partnerships, also resigned. Five people familiar with the matter suggested. Forbes that the decision was made out of frustration at Stability’s failed commercialization efforts. He said he plans to start his own company, tentatively named “Edge.” Saltzman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A number of sources have suggested that Forbes that Mostaque may intend to assist Saltsman with Edge after he steps down as CEO of Stability. Two sources who spoke to Mossadeq at the conference said he also wants to work on AI-related efforts in the healthcare sector.
Have a tip for us? Contact reporters Kenrick Cai at kcai@forbes.com or Signal at 415-570-9972, and Iain Martin at @iain.martin@forbes.com.
Since the fall, both executives and investors in Stability, including venture capital firms Coteo and Lightspeed Venture Partners, have called on Mossadegh to step down from his role as CEO, according to four people familiar with the matter. . A number of executives have since left the company, including Chief People Officer Ozden Onder, General Counsel Adam Evernon and Vice President of Applied Machine Learning Joe Pena. (Executives could not be reached for comment.)
Mustaq emerged as a key figure in the field of artificial intelligence just as Space was building hype, thanks to the viral success of Stable Diffusion. But his image was marred by accusations of exaggeration and overstatement — about his academic background, the development of stable diffusion of stability AI, and the industry’s potential. Forbes First reported last year. Still, Mostaque managed to raise more than $100 million at a $1 billion valuation for Stability AI.
But within a year, the firm was quickly running out of cash. By October 2023, it was burning about $8 million a month, Bloomberg previously reported. Efforts to raise additional funds at a cost of $4 billion have been largely unsuccessful, sources said. Forbes last year.
Nevertheless, Mossadegh has put on a brave face to the public. “Our goal is to be cash flow positive this year,” he wrote on Reddit in February. And even at the conference, he called his planned resignation the culmination of a successful mission, one person briefed said.
More from Forbes