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- ☕️ Stability AI's Future Looks Uncertain
☕️ Stability AI's Future Looks Uncertain
As if Stability AI wasn't having enough problems with talent leaving left and right, it's the turn of CEO Emad Mostaque, but does that mean he's finished? Meanwhile, rabbit's r1 little companion gadgets start shipping out, the BBC gets flooded with backlash from Doctor Who fans, and talks about Apple's iOS 18 and WWDC 2024 start circulating. Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI.
THE BIG AI STORY
Stability AI's dwindling headcount continues to dwindle, as next in line of the company's departures, including its CTO, VP of product, and VP of engineering, is the CEO himself, Emad Mostaque, who has stepped down from his position, and the board of directors as noted in a blog post. Mostaque claims that "you're not going to beat centralized AI with more centralized AI," but that doesn't mean the end of the road for him.
What do we know about this?
In an X/Twitter post, Mostaque says he's giving up on centralized AI and instead going "all in" on decentralized AI, also mentioned in the same blog post, citing the need for transparency in governance. Mostaque additionally stated that "the concentration of power in AI is bad for us all" and that he "decided to step down to fix this at Stability & elsewhere," though his exact plans are unknown - all this means for Stability AI, though, is one less talent.
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With the wildly successful launch of Claude 3, AI development startup Anthropic has seen a slew of interest from all sorts of sovereign wealth funds, but the company definitively slammed down one - Saudi Arabia. Following the bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which held an 8% stake in the startup, Anthropic executives stated national security risks as the main concern for rejecting Saudi money. However, Anthropic claims they will remain open to other sovereign wealth funds like the UAE's Mubadala.
Apple has recently been dipping its hands more into generative AI, such as last week when the company reportedly was in discussions with Google and OpenAI to power some of the iPhone's AI features for the upcoming iOS 18 update. According to Bloomberg, the update will be revealed at WWDC 2024, with reporter Mark Gruman stating that "the company is expected to spend a considerable amount of time discussing how it views AI," specifically how Apple is considering privacy concerns regarding AI.
For those who got their pre-orders in already, the first batch of rabbit's r1 pocket companion will be reaching the doors of U.S. clients soon, as shipping begins next week right as April gets going. Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show 2024 in Las Vegas a few months prior, the palm-sized, bright orange AI assistant comes packed with the company's rabbit OS, an operating system with a large action model (LAM) as its cornerstone.
Thinking that Doctor Who would be the perfect playground to test generative AI, the BBC backed out of the idea after widespread backlash from the fandom. BBC Head of Media David Housden claimed to the press that Doctor Who was also a thematically fitting lab rat with its sci-fi aesthetics, as the broadcaster planned to use text and image-based AI models to promote its series. Though the BBC didn't stop using LLMs for a little while after, the onslaught of official complaints eventually led to them making a public statement.
Hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, workplace safety platform provider Buddywise recently disclosed a successful seed round of €3.5 million. The seed round was led by neighboring Helsinki-based industrial technology fund Kvanted and other venture funds and firms like J12, Aligned, and Antler. With rising concerns over increased workplace accidents globally, Buddywise uses a combination of computer vision and AI to pinpoint real-time safety risks in the workplace as the new funds will accelerate the recruitment of top commercial and tech talent, additionally expanding across Europe.
Profluent, born from Salesforce's ProGen project, recently announced a successful round of funding totaling $35 million from venture firms like Spark Capital, Insight Partners, Air Street Capital, AIX Ventures, and Convergent Ventures. The company aims to revolutionize how new medicines are developed by leveraging ProGen, an AI model trained on a large dataset of proteins. Led by one of the ProGen researchers, Ali Madani, the company is currently focused on building up its models and training data sets from the recent extra cash flow.
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