Stability AI’s Founder Made Misleading Claims — Report

Stability AI’s founder Emad Mostaque made exaggerated statements about both his own background and his generative AI startup, according to a Forbes report.

The report, published over the weekend, claims Mostaque misled people — including investors — about receiving a master’s degree from Oxford University, as well as a deal with Amazon — which referred to it as a strategic partner — but was nothing more than a standard cloud computing leasing deal.

Stability has also described the OECD, WHO and World Bank as partners to investors — something they all deny, per the report.

The report also detailed issues related to payroll uncertainty, unpaid invoices, and monetary transactions between Stability and accounts controlled by Mostaque and his wife. A Stability spokesperson said those were actually loans the couple made to and from the company.

Controversy and big money

This isn’t the first time the London-based startup has found itself in the headlines.

Last fall, Stability AI locked up a $101 million raise led by Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners and O’Shaughnessy Ventures. The company did not release a valuation at the time, but Bloomberg reported the new cash infusion valued the company at around $1 billion.

At the time, some AI researchers disputed the startup’s claims that it created the image generator Stable Diffusion — which was an open-source project developed by researchers. 

It also was reported at that time the startup was looking to raise an additional $1 billion of capital at a multibillion-dollar valuation.

Those funding talks have stalled, per Forbes.

Stability is an AI-driven visual art startup. At the time of its fundraising, the company claimed its consumer-facing product DreamStudio had grown to more than a million registered users who have created more than 170 million images.

Further reading:

Stability AI Newest Addition To Unicorn Stable

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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