- Stability AI is laying off employees following the resignation of CEO Emad Mostaq.
- The company told employees in an email that it needed to “right-size parts of our business.”
- The email was sent by Stability AI's COO and CTO on Wednesday night.
Stability AI is laying off employees less than a month after Emad Mostak stepped down as CEO.
Employees were notified Wednesday night in an email sent by Chief Operating Officer Xiang Xiang Wong and Chief Technology Officer Christian LaForte and obtained by Business Insider.
Stability AI executives said the job cuts were the result of a need to “right-size parts of the business” and “focus” on operations following cost-cutting efforts over the past few weeks. .
The company completed a funding round valued at $1 billion in 2022. Monthly expenses were $8 million, and February revenue was $5.4 million, the Financial Times reported, citing anonymous sources. In November, it had revenue of $3 million.
It's unclear how many positions will be cut, but as of October, Stability had nearly 200 employees.
When Mostak announced his resignation on Post X in March, he said he was stepping down to “correct” the “concentration of power in the hands of AI.”
According to Fortune, investor Cotu became concerned after Forbes magazine reported in June that Mostak was exaggerating his academic and career achievements, and tried to oust him. Mostak denied these claims.
The British startup is also fighting a lawsuit from Getty Images that was filed in January 2023. The lawsuit alleges that Stability AI “scraped” copyrighted images to train Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image generator. The company dismissed the claims in a motion filed with the High Court in London.
Stability AI declined to comment.
Please read a copy of the email below.
Dear team, As you know, over the past few weeks, our leadership team has focused on strategic planning to reduce our cost base, increase support with investors and partners, and enable our team to continue developing and releasing innovative products. I have been working hard.
Following a review of our global team, we have decided that we need to restructure parts of our business, which unfortunately means saying goodbye to some colleagues. Those affected by this have been notified individually and we will continue to support them throughout this period.
These decisions are not taken lightly and are aimed at right-sizing parts of the business and focusing on the business. This is important to take us in a more sustainable direction and put us in the best possible position to continue the development of cutting processes. Edge models and products. Products such as Stable Diffusion 3 API and Stable Assistant Beta strengthen our deep technology leadership and demonstrate our unique systemic importance to the AI ecosystem.
We will meet as scheduled at City Hall on Thursday. If you have any questions, we encourage you to ask our leadership team in the form that will be submitted shortly. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to speak to your manager.
Thank you for your dedication and contribution. We recognize the challenges we face, but we have plans in place. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of this team, we are making progress every day and moving steadily in the right direction.
Best wishes, Shanshan & Christian
Do you work at Stability AI Co., Ltd.? contact: jmann@businessinsider.com
