- The Rundown AI
- Posts
- Stability AI's unstable future
Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Stability AI, the darling of the open-source AI movement, is suddenly looking a lot less… Stable.
With the resignation of its founder and CEO, alongside a mass exodus of top researchers, the startup’s future is looking anything but certain. Let’s investigate…
In today’s AI rundown:
Stability AI CEO resigns amid turmoil
OpenAI woos Hollywood with Sora
Access Google Gemini 1.5 for free
Report: Enterprise AI usage, budgets surging
5 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 3 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
STABILITY AI
Image source: Bloomberg
The Rundown: Stability AI founder and CEO Emad Mostaque just resigned from his position following a string of high-level departures and investor pressure, leaving the startup in a state of upheaval.
The details:
Mostaque stated he stepped down to pursue decentralized AI, arguing that the concentration of power in the industry is "bad for us all."
The move follows months of tensions with major investors like Coatue Management, who called for Mostaque to step down.
Stability also lost several key research members last week prior to Mostaque’s resignation.
As of October 2023, the startup was reportedly burning through $8M per month.
Why it matters: Don’t let the name fool you — the fire surrounding Stability’s… instability has been smoldering for a while. Despite impressive open-source model advances, its financial struggles and massive turnover raise some pretty serious questions about the startup’s future.
TOGETHER WITH DENTORO
The Rundown: Dentoro helps startups and enterprises develop tailored AI solutions and prototypes, with rates starting at just $36/hour – up to 60% less than the market average.
Harness AI for chatbots, analytics, audio/visual apps & more
Well-versed in Web3: previously built a $200M TVL DeFi app
Founded by ex-Googlers & Harvard alumni
Start building with Dentoro today and get 30% off your first month.
OPENAI
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: OpenAI is reportedly making moves to partner with the entertainment industry, pitching its unreleased AI video generation tool Sora to Hollywood studios, directors, and talent agencies.
The details:
OpenAI has scheduled meetings in LA next week with key Hollywood players to encourage integration of Sora into filmmakers' work.
Sora has already been shared with select high-profile actors and directors despite not yet being publicly available.
Sora’s viral demos led Hollywood mogul Tyler Perry to pause his $800M studio expansion, saying he doesn’t see ‘how the industry survives’ without regulations.
Why it matters: Despite Hollywood unions securing a deal on AI protections, OpenAI courting the industry has to bring some additional unease. AI is poised to completely transform entertainment — but the path forward won’t be without some painful changes to the traditional industry structure.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to access Google Gemini 1.5 for free and take advantage of its context window of up to 1M tokens — enough to upload massive files or even long videos.
Step-by-step:
Visit Google DeepMind’s website.
Click “Gemini 1.5” or scroll down to where it says “Introducing Gemini 1.5”
Next, press “Try Gemini 1.5” and sign in with your Gmail account.
That’s it! You should see a screen that says ‘Get Started’ that takes you directly to Google’s Gemini 1.5 chatbot 🎉
AI RESEARCH
Image source: a16z
The Rundown: A new report from a16z surveyed Fortune 500 and top enterprise leaders on AI adoption, finding that both attitudes and investments have shifted dramatically in the past six months.
The details:
Enterprise spend on LLMs averaged $7M in 2023, with 2-5x budget increases planned for 2024.
In one case, an enterprise justified an 8x AI budget increase after seeing ~90% cost savings.
While 80-90% utilized closed source models in 2023, 46% of leaders now prefer open source.
Internal uses (coding assistants, text summarization) are moving faster than external apps (chatbots) as enterprises navigate hallucinations and public perception.
Why it matters: An inflection point seems to be coming for enterprise AI — with massive budget increases and expanding use cases set to drive explosive growth. While consumer-focused AI garners all the hype, enterprise-tailored solutions are about to see demand skyrocket.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
📝 HyperWrite AI Agent- An AI agent to automate repetitive workflows
🧠 SciPhi- Open source platform for developers to build on RAG
🔍 Social Listening GPT- A ChatGPT GPT to gain insights into audience sentiments and trends
🚀 Lutra AI- Create AI workflows in English without coding
🗣️ Vocalo- Gain English fluency by talking with AI
QUICK HITS
OpenAI filed a trademark registration for ‘Voice Engine’, covering details like voice assistants and automatic voice recognition and generation, hinting at the company’s plans to release a new suite of voice tech.
Gatekeep Labs released Gatekeep, a text-to-video AI that crafts educational explainer videos from simple text prompts.
Insilico Medicine published a new study on AI’s ability to accelerate drug development, with its experimental drug becoming the first AI-developed drug to reach phase 2 clinical trials.
LimX Dynamics’ P1 robot showed off its control and stability in a new video, successfully navigating an unfamiliar forest and handling various obstacles and tests.
Nvidia and Hippocratic AI are collaborating to develop AI-generated nurses, offering services like pre-op care, screenings, companionship, and more aimed at addressing the growing nurse shortage in the U.S.
MIT researchers developed a new AI image generating approach called DMD, which produces images at a similar quality to Stable Diffusion at 30x the speed.
Tennessee passed the ELVIS Act, aimed at protecting musicians and other artists against the use of their voice, name, and likeness by AI.
THAT’S A WRAP
SPONSOR US
Get your product in front of over 500k+ AI enthusiasts
Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech professionals, investors, engineers, managers, and business owners around the world. Get in touch today.
FEEDBACK
How would you rate today's newsletter?Vote below to help us improve the newsletter for you. |
If you have specific feedback or anything interesting you’d like to share, please let us know by replying to this email.
Join the conversation