In this episode, Peter and Emad discuss Emad's stepping down as CEO of StabilityAI, his next steps into decentralized AI, and why there is so much urgency to work on decentralization NOW. 


Emad Mostaque is the former CEO and Co-Founder of Stability AI, a company funding the development of open-source music- and image-generating systems such as Dance Diffusion, Stable Diffusion, and Stable Video 3D. 

Follow Emad’s journey on X: https://twitter.com/EMostaque
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These organizations are telling you that they're building something that could kill you, and something that could remove all our freedom and liberty.

And they're saying it's a good thing, you should back them because it's cool.

They have the political power, people are scared of them.

Power should not be invested in any 1 individual.

If I can accelerate this over the next period I don't have to make an impact.

Whereas again you see everyone else trying to get more and more power.

The only way that you can beat it to create the standard that represents humanity is decentralized intelligence.

The data sets and norms from that will be ones that help children, that help people suffering, that reflect our moral upstanding and the best of us and gathers the best of us to do it.

A week ago, Imad Mistak was on my stage at Abundance360 talking about the future of open source AI, democratized, decentralized AI.

The day after A360, he stepped down as CEO of Stability.

Now, 5 days later, I've sat down with Imad to talk about why he's stepping down, what he's doing Next, the future of AI.

He talks about the dangers of centralized AI and the potential for decentralized, democratized AI to be the only avenue that truly uplifts all of humanity.

All right, If you like this episode, please subscribe.

If you're a mood shot entrepreneur, this is an episode you're not going to want to miss.

So you and I were on stage literally last week at the 2024 Abundance Summit talking about the whole open source AI movement.

You were beginning to talk about decentralized AI.

You were talking about where stability was, the speed of the development of the different products.

And the day after the Abundance Summit was over, the news hit that you had stepped down as CEO of stability and stepped off the board.

So let's begin with the obvious question, why?

And I have huge respect for you and I know a lot of the issues in the past, but I'd like you to have a chance to share with entrepreneurs out there and folks interested in AI, exactly your side of what's happening.

I think that Elon Musk once characterized being a CEO as staring into the abyss and chewing glass because you are looking at a very uncertain future, having to make decisions and the chewing glass is all the problems that come to you all the time.

And it's required to steer the ship when things are incredibly uncertain and stability is a pretty unique company at a unique time.

Like we hired our first developer and researcher 2 years ago.

And then in those 2 years, we built the best models of almost every type, except for large language, image, audio, 3d, et cetera, and had over 300 million downloads of the various models we created and supported, which was a bit crazy.

In terms of usually in a startup, you don't have to deal with global leaders and policy debates about the future of humanity, and AGI, and everything else.

Yeah, at the same time as building code, yes.

And especially building code to take fraction of the resources of our competitors.

Like we had certain teams who offered triple their entire packages to move to other companies.

I was grateful that only a couple of researchers before I kind of announced and tell me I was gonna leave left for other companies.

No 1 left for another big company, which I think is testament to that kind of loyalty in the mission.

But, you know, what we've seen over the last year is, or the last half year in particular, is the question of governance in AI is something that's incredibly important.

And who manages, owns, controls this technology and how is it distributed?

So we saw, you know, everything from kind of open AI to congressional testimonies to other things.

And as you know, 1 of my things has always been, how do we get this technology in the hands of people all around the world and then who governs it?

And how can we then take this technology to have an impact from education to healthcare to others?

So Stability is a company that build great base models and we got to that point.

The revenue is going up, which is always nice, you know, finding the business model.

And again, I think it was always curious to see that as a deep tech company 2 years in people were asking us, you know, why aren't we profitable?

And I was like, it takes a bit of time and investment to get to profitability.

I think opening, I mean, they took, they're not there yet, but then they have 8 years.

I think all the comparisons are perhaps unfair.

So reviewing everything and kind of looking at it, I was like, do I really want to be a CEO?

I think there is a lot imbued in that in tech, but it's a very interesting position.

Just to dive into that a second, because we've had this conversation, because there was a lot of pressure asking for you to step down as CEO.

I think founders typically want to see themselves or feel they need to be the CEO.

And I've heard you say recently that you view yourself more as a founder and strategist than a CEO.

Yeah, I think everyone's got their own skill sets, right?

So I'm particularly great at taking creatives, developers, researchers, others, and achieving their full potential in designing systems.

But I should not be dealing with HR and operations and business developments and other elements.

There are far better people than me to do that.

So now, for example, our most popular thing, stable diffusion, and comfy UI, the system around it, is the most widely used image software models in the world.

There are great media CEOs that can take that, amplify that to make hundreds of millions of revenue.

Is there anything that specifically tipped for you that has I mean, because you have done an extraordinary job.

You have to feel a whole slew of emotional elements.

I've had to step down as CEO on 2 occasions over the 27 companies.

I've had to sell a company for pennies on the dollar and it takes an emotional hardship on you.

I've had calls for me to step down as CEO since the, well, since 2022, you know?

But I always thought, you know, what's best for the company and the mission?

And when I look at the world right now, there's a few things.

A, the company has momentum, it has spread, it's turning into a business.

Like last year, I said, let's not enter into large revenue contracts, because technology isn't mature yet, and our processes aren't mature yet, and you have to deliver.

So we did a lot of experimental things, we were setting up and again now it's ramping on a business side.

On a technology side, the technology is maturing.

Diffusion transformers, such as stable diffusion 3 and Sora are going to be the next big thing and again, Stability has got a great place there.

But I think there's also the macro on this.

So if you look at the OpenAI CEO thing, Sam Altman said, the board can fire me anytime, This is the governance of OpenAI.

And then he is back on and he appoints himself back on the board.

I mean, I respect the people on the board greatly.

You know, I think there's some great individuals, but Who should manage the technology that drives humanity and teaches every child and manages our government?

Who's really leading on that, that can build these models and do those things?

As you know, I've always wanted to build the science models and the health teams done that.

And then my concept of a national model for every country owned by the people of the country, all tied together, I think it needs to be by a web 3, not crypto or necessary token framework.

That's something that's a brand new kind of challenge and 1 that I think there's only a window of a year or 2 to do.

If you have highly capable models, let's put aside AGI for now, which we can discuss later, really accelerating, then no 1 will be able to keep up with that unless you build in a decentralized manner and distributed manner for data, talent, distribution, standards, and more.

So there's only a small window of time here to do that.

And realistically, yeah, successful companies and these things are all great.

But Genetify is a bit bigger than the classical norms.

Just like the whole life cycle of the company was a lot faster than the classical norms.

So that's why I felt, you know, now is the right time to make that change and hopefully play my part in making sure this technology is distributed as widely as possible and governed properly.

As pretty much, I think I'm the only real independent agent that has built state of the art models in the world right now.

Yeah, we've seen a lot of turbulence with open AI.

We just saw Mustafa from Inflection become part of Microsoft.

And I am curious, I mean, you had a now famous conversation with Satya a couple of days after stepping down.

Was that investigatory on your part, or was that just a touch base with an old friend?

Oh, that's just chill trolling, actually, you know, like to let off some steam.

That picture was, I think, from a year or 2, a year or so ago.

But, you know, I think Satya is an amazing CEO and, you know, he responds again like the top CEOs incredibly quickly when they message.

He's got a great vision, but there is again this concern about consolidation in tech.

We didn't take money from any trillion dollar companies.

You know, we remained and retained full independence, you know, and to the detriment of some of the elements there.

We could have taken very big checks and other things.

And even though you have good intentions, you have to remember that companies are slow, dumb AIs that over-optimize for various things.

And that's most certainly in the best interest of humanity when you have infrastructure.

It's like this is the airports, the railways, the roads of the future.

AI isn't infrastructure, which I'm sure it should be.

And should it be consolidated under the control of a few private companies with unclear objective functions?

Again, the people in the companies may be great.

He's consolidating a lot of power for the good of the company.

And also he has a, I think, genuinely good heart and mission to bring technology to the world.

Especially with the new types of structure.

Like again I think the commentary was always interesting.

It's like, yeah, Satya playing 4D chess, assembling the AI Avengers.

He's building an amazing mass of talent, covering the bases, and Microsoft is doing incredibly well here, right?

If you asked who's doing best in the AI community, I would say Microsoft.

But there has to be concerns about consolidation of talent and power and reach.

Before I get to your vision going forward, because it's so important, and what you're doing next, I just, again, As a founder, as a CEO of a moonshot company, we have a lot of those listening here.

Can I ask, how are you feeling right now?

Because the decision to step down has to have huge emotional...

What's the feeling after making that momentous decision?

I was a big feeling of relief, because there's that Japanese concept of ikigai.

Yeah, do what you like and do what you believe you're adding value and other people do too.

You know, like realistically again, I think I was an excellent research leader, strategist, other things, but I didn't communicate properly or hire the right other leaders in certain other areas of the company, and there are better people to do that.

And so I wasn't doing what I was best at a lot, or I could have the most measurable value.

You know, there's a lot of legacy, technical organization or other debt, especially when you grow so, so, so fast.

And, you know, we were lucky that we had high retention in the important areas and we could execute in spite of all of that, in spite of going to the company route.

I think, you know, moonshot founders, you have to do it because you don't have the resources at the start and you have to guide the ship, you know, as it goes out from port, but there does come that transition point there.

And there is a competing thing where you typically take on VC money, which has an objective function, versus your overall mission.

So again, if you look at the generative AI world right now, how many credible, intelligent, independent voices are there?

That have had the ability to build models and design things and make an impact, you know, there's not many.

So I was like, that's where I can add my most leverage.

And also, the design space is again, is unprecedentedly huge, because the entire market has just been created.

And what needs to be built there, we need to actually have the agency to go and build that.

I felt that now there's a million options.

I want it rather than taking a long break, get on with things.

I've just done the first thing in kind of web 3 and I've got a whole bunch of other things we're going to discuss kind of coming and catalyze stuff that can make exponential benefit because you know like massively transform to purpose here is I want every kid to achieve their potential and give them the tools to do that.

And I love you for that because you've been true to that vision.

And I know on the heels of your announcement, you've been reached out to by national leaders, by corporate, by CEOs and major investment groups, and you have a lot of opportunity ahead of you.

So let's talk about where you want to go next.

You mentioned publicly and you discussed on our Abundance stage the idea of democratized and decentralized AI.

Yeah, I think that when I said I'm going to move to do my part in decentralizing AI, people are like, isn't that just open source?

I think decentralizing AI has a few important components.

Everyone should be able to access this technology for fruits of labor.

And there's some very interesting political and other elements around that.

Number 2 is the governance of this technology.

There's a recent Databricks thing, a model where they show that you have massive improvements from data.

You know, who governs the data that teaches your child or manages your health or runs your government?

I think too few are asking and we need digital transparency and other things like that.

So accessibility, you know, you've got the governance aspect of that.

And then finally you have, how does it all come together?

Is it a single package or is it a modularized infrastructure that people can build on and is available kind of everywhere?

You know, does it require monoliths and central servers where if it goes down and you have an outage on GPT-4, you're a bit messed up or someone can attack and co-opt it?

I think that those are kind of the key elements that

I was looking at when I was talking about decentralizing AI.

And I've come up with an infrastructure to do that, I hope, as well.

So if you don't mind, let's double click on it even further.

So you mentioned we don't have long to get there, if that's a true statement.

And then what does getting there look like?

If you had all the capital available and if the right national leaders were hearing about this, because a lot of this is supporting the populace of a nation to have AI that serves them versus top down.

What's it look like 2, 05:10 years from now?

Yeah, I think you'll have both proprietary and open source AI, and they'll work in combination.

The practical example I give is that this AI is like graduates, right?

Very talented, slightly overenthusiastic graduates.

But I really have been on stage with Matt Friedman last week at A360.

When we were there, he said, it's like we've discovered this new concept.

With 100 billion graduates that will work for free.

We need to figure out how to say Atlantis.

Once a government embraces centralized technology, it's very difficult to decentralize it.

You know, at the AI safety summit in the UK, the King of England came on stage, or came via video call, and he said that this is the biggest thing since fire, you know?

And that was like, what, 6, 7 months later?

I think he took that from, from, the founder, the CEO of Google, AI is as powerful as, as fire and electricity.

I've heard the same from like Jeff Bezos and a bunch of others, you know, not Kindle Fire, Proper Fire, you know.

But then if you think about it, norms are going to be set in this next period.

Like, you know, I'm in California, LA at the moment.

If you don't set norms on rights for actors and the movie industry, then you could have a massive disruption just occurring as full length Hollywood features come in a year or 2 generated.

If you don't have norms around open models and ownership and governance by the people, it will be top down governance because governments can't allow that to be out of control if they don't have a reasonable alternative.

And I think the window is only a year or 2, cause every government must have a strategy by the end of the year.

And so I think if you provide them a good solution that has this element of democratic governance and others, that will be immensely beneficial.

I think also it's urgent because we have the ability to make a huge difference.

As we can probably discuss later, having all the knowledge of cancer, longevity, autism at your fingertips.

We have the technology for that right now.

We have the technology that no 1 is ever alone again on those things.

Or to give every child a superior education, literally in a couple of years.

Like there is an urgency both from there's a small window, but also from we must do this now, because it can scale and make that impact we have dreamed of for so long.

The enabling technology is finally in, it's finally good enough, fast enough, and cheap enough.

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So let's talk about the objective function of democratized and decentralized AI.

Is it that the compute is resident in countries around the world?

Is it that the models are owned by the citizens of the world?

I think that you can think of the supercomputers like universities.

You don't need many universities, honestly, if someone's building good quality models.

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Why I'm Leaving My Company Immediately (Stability AI) w/ Emad Mostaque | EP #93