|
Listen to this story
|
Stability AI has acquired Init ML, the developer of the acclaimed AI-powered imaging tool Clipdrop for an undisclosed amount. As per the deal, Stability AI will integrate its generative AI into the Clipdrop platform to make it accessible to creators, which already boasts 15 million users.
Init ML will now function as a wholly-owned, autonomous subsidiary of Stability AI, with all employees remaining in their current roles. Cyril Diagne, CEO of Init ML, will take up the role of Vice President of Innovation, Clipdrop, while COO Damien Henry will be the Senior Vice President of Product, Clipdrop, and CTO Jonathan Blanchet will become the Vice President of Engineering, Clipdrop.
The acquisition provides Clipdrop with Stability AI’s technology and computing power to create the next generation of imaging tools. The deal marks a new milestone in both firms’ journey to democratise the power of AI and multimodal foundation models in creative workflows, according to Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO of Stability AI.
Init ML, which is based in Paris, France, was founded in July 2020 and received a seed investment from AI venture capital firm ‘Air Street Capital’. Its flagship suite of imaging applications, Clipdrop, has over 15 million users today. Currently, advanced machine learning research, such as Remove Background and Super Resolution, is included in Clipdrop and Stability AI’s powerful generative AI models are being incorporated into its beta applications.
The strategic acquisition comes in the backdrop of Stability AI’s crown jewel Stable Diffusion, an open-source text-to-image tool. The tool caught the public eye and was lauded by AI stalwarts as it is free and has no content filters. Former Tesla Director of AI, who recently returned to OpenAI, Andrej Karpathy praised Stable Diffusion and claimed that that tool marks a day of historic proportion for human creativity.
The code and model card of Stable Diffusion is available on GitHub and HuggingFace.
