stability ai sale

Stability AI has reportedly explored a possible sale. Photo Credit: Stability AI

London-headquartered Stability AI, the company behind products including Stable Audio, has reportedly explored a possible sale.

The Stable Diffusion developer’s potential selloff entered the media spotlight in reports from outlets including Bloomberg. This exploration of a sale reportedly initiated after New York City-based Coatue (which, besides possessing a stake in Stability AI, has backed ByteDance, Dapper Labs, and more) in an October letter expressed concerns about the company’s financials and leadership.

As part of the same criticism, 24-year-old Coatue reportedly pushed for the resignation of CEO Emad Mostaque, citing its qualms with his management style and purportedly related executive departures.

Moreover, according to The Information, reps “from both Coatue and [fellow Stability AI investor] Lightspeed have already exited Stability’s board” due to disagreements involving Mostaque’s style.

A spokesperson for Sound Ventures-backed Stability AI, which announced an over $100 million raise in October of 2022, promptly touted Mostaque’s contributions to the company and refuted the reported pursuit of a sale, however.

“While several parties have expressed interest in the purchase of Stability AI, we are not trying to sell the company and are focused on releasing leading models,” a spokesperson said of the matter, with the highlighted sales talks having reportedly involved AI businesses Cohere and Jasper.

In any event, though Mostaque doesn’t seem to have specifically addressed the rumored sale discussions or the reported push for his departure, he remains active on Twitter/X. Earlier this week, the 40-year-old, whose company is facing an infringement complaint from Getty, published a lengthy post about his plan “to move to a more aligned model focusing on our core talent.”

“After much introspection we will now be rolling out Stability Memberships,” the relatively in-depth text reads in part.

Bringing the focus back to the music space, it’s unclear how exactly a Stability sale would impact Stable Audio. As it stands, the song-generation product, which debuted in mid-September, has a free tier as well as a “professional” tier through which users can for $11.99 per month pump out as many as 500 tracks.

Each of the works can span up to 90 seconds, the appropriate webpage shows, and the decidedly affordable plan also enables the AI-produced outputs’ use in commercial projects. Of course, this and an abundance of similar tools are generating a substantial amount of audio – one of several points that Sony Music touched upon when urging regulatory action during the Senate’s AI Insight Forum yesterday.