Mostaque had answers for all of this, but investors lost confidence anyway. Four months after the article came out, VCs from both Coatue and Lightspeed left the board of directors, signaling they no longer had faith in the business. By the end of the year, the company\u2019s head of research, chief operating officer, general counsel, and head of human resources had left as well. Many of Stability\u2019s prominent researchers would follow. Under pressure from investors, Mostaque finally left the company on March 22, 2024\u2014just a few weeks after Lady Gaga\u2019s greenhouse soiree.<\/p>\n
Akkaraju and Parker wasted no time in taking over Stability, installing Akkaraju as CEO and Parker as chairman of the board. They never spoke to Mostaque, although the former CEO says he reached out to offer his support.<\/p>\n
The pair set about trying to remake Stability AI for the moment. Not long after they took over, the competition got fiercer. That September, another startup, Runway, signed the AI industry\u2019s first big deal<\/a> with a movie studio. Runway would get access to Lionsgate\u2019s proprietary catalog of movies as training data and develop tools for the studio. \u201cThe time it takes to go from idea to execution is just shrinking\u2014like a lot,\u201d says Crist\u00f3bal Valenzuela, CEO of Runway. \u201cYou can do things in just a couple of minutes that used to take two weeks.\u201d In the coming years, he predicts, \u201cyou will have teams of two, three, four people making the work that used to require armies and hundreds of millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n The deal with Lionsgate pushed the AI-fication of Hollywood into overdrive. \u201cI can tell you, last year when I came to Los Angeles versus today, it\u2019s night and day,\u201d says Amit Jain, CEO of Luma, another Stability competitor. \u201cLast year it was \u2018Let\u2019s prototype, let\u2019s proof-of-concept\u2019\u2014they were deferring the inevitable. This year it\u2019s a whole different tone.\u201d<\/p>\n Moonvalley, an AI company founded by former Google DeepMind researchers (and the parent company of Asteria, an AI film studio cofounded by the actor Natasha Lyonne), recently told Time magazine<\/a> that more than a dozen major Hollywood studios are testing its latest model\u2014signaling openness to the technology, if not yet a full embrace.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really about me and Sean coming in and providing that direction, that leadership, and really taking advantage of what we call the three T\u2019s: timing, team, and technology,\u201d Akkaraju says.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sitting not at his TED Talk but in his $20 million mansion near Beverly Hills, on an immaculate overstuffed white couch overlooking a manicured garden. Akkaraju is fit, with a gleaming white smile and a button-up that shows off his biceps. His eye contact and handshake are equally strong.<\/p>\n