Robin Rombach and a group of key researchers that helped develop the Stable Diffusion text-to-image generation model have left the troubled generative AI startup.
Much of Stability’s success can be traced directly to the Stable Diffusion research, which was originally an academic project at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Heidelberg University. Stability became involved seven months after the publication of the initial research paper when Mostaque offered the academics a tranche of his company’s computing resources to further develop the text-to-image model.
Now, Rombach and his team add their names to a rapidly growing list of high profile technical departures from Stability AI. Vice presidents Christian Cantrell , Scott Draves , Patrick Hebron and Joe Penna all left in the last year. Other notable departures include research chief David Ha and LLM leads Stanislav Fort and his successor Louis Castricato. Stability’s VP of audio Ed Newton-Rex resigned in November in a protest against Stability and other AI startups’ treatment of copyrighted data.
Investment firm Coatue resigned from the board, while Lightspeed Venture Partners resigned its board observer seat Stability AI in October 2023,reported. Per the report, Coatue called for Mostaque to resign as CEO and pushed for a sale of the company.