Stability AI, the Company Behind Stable Diffusion, Raises $101 Mn at A Billion Dollar Valuation

World’s first community-driven and open-source AI innovator Stability AI has raised USD $101 million in funding. The funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, and O'Shaughnessy Ventures LLC. 

According to a press release, the London-based firm will use these funds to accelerate the development of open AI models for language, image, audio, 3D, video, and for consumer and global enterprise use-cases. 

Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque said, "AI promises to solve some of humanity's biggest challenges. But we will only realize this potential if the technology is open and accessible to all. Stability AI puts the power back into the hands of the developer communities and opens the door for ground-breaking new applications. An independent entity in this space supporting these communities can create real value and change."

Stability AI is the brain behind Stable Diffusion – a free and open-source text-to-image generator – launched in August this year. Since its launch, Stable Diffusion has been downloaded and witnessed licensing by over 200,000 developers around the world. Moreover, Stability AI's DreamStudio quickly grew to over a million registered users over 50 countries – where they have collectively created more than 170 million images.
"At Coatue, we believe that open source AI technologies have the power to unlock human creativity and achieve a broader good," said Sri Viswanath, general partner at Coatue. "Stability AI is a big idea that dreams beyond the immediate applications of AI. We are excited to be part of Stability AI's journey, and look forward to seeing what the world creates with Stability AI's technology," he added.