Emad Mostaque

Mohammad Emad Mostaque (Bengali: মোহম্মদ ইমাদ মোশতাক) is the founder and CEO of Stability AI, one of the companies behind Stable Diffusion.

Early life and education

Mostaque was born on April 1983 to a Bengali Muslim family in Jordan. He was taken to Dhaka, Bangladesh a month after his birth, and migrated with his family to the United Kingdom at the age of seven. He is a graduate of the University of Oxford.

At age 19, Mostaque met his wife while on a student trip to the United States. He has been diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD. In his twenties, he became interested in helping the Islamic world by creating online forums for Muslim communities and developing "Islamic AI" which would help guide people on their religious journey.

Career

After graduating, Mostaque went on to spend 13 years working at various hedge funds in the United Kingdom.

In 2019 Mostaque founded Symmitree, a startup that aimed to reduce the cost of technology for individuals living in poverty, which he worked on for 1 year.

In late 2020 Mostaque founded Stability AI. Much of the company's funding comes directly from Mostaque, as well as other investment companies such as Eros Investments. The company spent $600,000 of its $10 million initial funding to train Stable Diffusion, and announced a $100 million seed round of a valuation of $1 billion. In March 2023, he signed an open letter calling for "all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4".

In June, 2023, a news report citing more than 30 sources, including investors and former Stability AI employees, stated that Mostaque had misled investors and the public about his educational background, a partnership with Amazon Web Services, the extent of his involvement in developing Stable Diffusion, and partnerships with several NGOs.

On July 16, 2023, he declared that generative artificial intelligence "is a $1 trillion investment opportunity but will be 'biggest bubble of all time'".