Stability AI’s head of research quits

The head of research at the artificial intelligence firm Stability AI, David Ha, has left the company. This is the second high-profile exit from the maker of text-to-image tool Stability Diffusion. The chief operating officer Ren Ito was ‘let go’ from the company a few weeks back, reported Bloomberg.

Ha worked at the Google Brain division before joining Stability AI in October. At Google, his work was focused on generative AI. He has also worked at Goldman Sachs as a managing director. He is an alumnus of the University of Tokyo and the University of Toronto.

Apart from Ha and Ito, the vice president of product, Christian Cantrell left the company in March. He was responsible for Stability AI’s offerings like DreamStudio software. In a statement to Bloomberg, Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque said that the company is ‘reconstituting leadership’ as it scales. He also added that they plan to grow up to 185 or more.

Stability AI launched its deep learning model Stability Diffusion in 2022, rivaling other similar tools like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s Dall.e and Midjourney. The three-year-old generative AI startup has raised $100 million and has a valuation of $1 billion. The investors include Coatue Management and Lightspeed Venture Partners. 

A June 4 report by Forbes said that the founder of the London-based startup Emad Mostaque has a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University and not a Master’s as claimed earlier. The report also alleged that the source code for its marquee product Stability Diffusion was written by a different group of researchers. 

Last week, the startup announced that it is releasing a new generative AI model for generating images that look more realistic than the previous versions.