Stability AI's CEO said the company' was back in growth mode after a rough period, with business up by triple digits and marquee investors back on the cap table after having cut ties with the company.
"We have now a clean balance sheet, no debt, nothing," said Stability CEO Prem Akkaraju at Fortune's Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco on Monday.
While Akkaraju declined to disclose the company's revenue, he said the business, now focused on its API and licensing it service, has seen "triple digit growth."
Akkaraju joined Stability about six months ago, part of new management and investor group that includes Greycroft Partners' cofounder Dana Settle, who spoke alongside Akkaraju at Brainstorm AI, as well as tech entrepreneur Sean Parker. Despite being a one-time AI industry darling as the creator of Stable Diffusion, a popular image generation tool, Stability AI had been roiled by chaotic management that caused investors to abandoned the company and led to the departure of its founding CEO. The company was considering a sale.
Asked how bad the situation was on Monday, Akkaraju cited one of Silicon Valley's most legendary comebacks. “People forget that Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy in '97,” he said. “They were closer than this company was.”
Settle of Greycroft called Stability's turnaround “a miracle," and said that jumping into opportunities that others don't see is where the outsized returns are made.
Akkaraju and Parker previously worked together at Weta Digital, a video effects company that was used to create several Marvel Studios movies, as well as the Avatar films from director James Cameron. Akkaraju became involved with Stability before being officially named CEO in June, and amid work cutting deals with investors and ridding Stability of all of its debt, he called Cameron to make sure that he agreed the company “was worth looking at.”
Since then, Cameron has joined Stability's board. Coatue, one of Stability's big investors has rejoined the board and re-invested in the company. VC firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, which also clashed with Stability's former management, has also since re-invested in the company.
"We cut deals in the best way that you cut deals, which is with alignment of interests. And everyone on the other side of the table saw that this was too important to the ecosystem to fail," Akkaraju said, referring to Stability AI technology.
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