Prem Akkaraju, Chief Executive Officer, Stability AI, Dana Settle, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Greycroft Moderator: Allie Garfinkle, Senior Reporter, Finance, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune Brainstorm AI


Brainstorm AI 2024: A New Lens on Stability

Conferences

Prem Akkaraju, Chief Executive Officer, Stability AI, Dana Settle, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Greycroft Moderator: Allie Garfinkle, Senior Reporter, Finance, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune Brainstorm AI

Prem Akkaraju, Chief Executive Officer, Stability AI, Dana Settle, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Greycroft Moderator: Allie Garfinkle, Senior Reporter, Fortune; Co-chair, Fortune Brainstorm AI

Frame Dana. I am so excited to be here with you in part because this was known on my Bingo card for 2024 talking about a turnaround for this company less than eight months ago, stability was in a rapid decline. But here you are, you both stepped in and decided you really wanted to take it on why it wasn't on my bingo card either actually. But no one, no, eight or nine months. Yeah, it's no one's Bingo's Card. I think that um well, it, it was really because the, the, the technology and the team were too good and uh I've been partners with Sean Parker for over a decade and we have just did a very similar uh play at Weta Digital where we created an application layer for film and TV. We made Avatar one Avatar two big movies at that with that company. And we were after and that was we sold that company in November 21. And after that, we're like, ok, we should, we should probably be looking at the A I version of what we just did and how could we use A I to make film and TV, production gaming, as well as marketing, advertising, more efficient. And then this opportunity came about and I got heavily involved with Dana um on this like earlier this year. And um you know, this is where a lot of the outweighed returns live is when you're willing to go in and do the very hard work to kind of turn it around. And we did that very quickly and in opportunistic situations. And I think, um I'm, I'm fortunate to be a part of the uh the partnership now, the tram brick along with many other partners. Uh But, you know, like Prime, that is where the outsized, you know, returns live is actually in jumping into opportunities that, that other people don't always see. Um, and especially in an area like this, that's moving so quickly and where the technology here, like Prime said was just, it was, it was too good to let go. Dana. Dana bring the, sorry to interrupt the, the uh um she brings up a very good point. Like opportunities are things that only a handful of people see if we all saw them, they wouldn't be opportunities. And so that, that's kind of the definition and I think that we saw it and everything that we've done for this. How many months has it been now? It's been six months, six months, last six years. How long a time? Exactly. It's like 100 and 52 years in like real time. But, uh, we, we've seen extraordinary results in such a short period of time but, and it was really, it's, it's good to see that, you know, our assumptions really coming through and what was the financial state of the company when the two of you came in? What were we dealing with here? She's the, yeah, I mean, what are we looking at the financial state of the, they needed funding and, and that was, you know, where we had to really move quickly on analyzing the opportunity. And so we moved very quickly, but so deeply because we wanted to make sure that it was what we thought it was. And, you know, like Prime said, it's proven out to be, I mean, e everything we thought and more and I think in particular for us, it was really backing an incredible leadership team in Prime and Sean Parker to, you know, come in and, and lead what is essentially doing what they had done just a few years earlier in the South Space. I mean, you said they needed money. What for how bad was it was it because the reporting at the time, my colleague, Jessica Matthews and I spent a lot of time reporting on the story and the, the narrative was that it, it stability was a dust store. Well, I mean, look all A I companies require a, a lot of capital. I mean, that's no surprise. I think you can read it. Anywhere. Um But you know, I, I think what, what happens when you come in with a really incredible experienced management team, leadership team is they know how to get in. And this is prime, I mean, Prime really was working with the team um at stability even before we close the transaction and, and uh and, and helping to identify, you know, exactly where were the areas that they needed to focus on for this opportunity that we saw in visual media. I would say that people forget that Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy in 1997. Actually, I think they were probably closer to bankruptcy than actually, you know, this company was. And again, it all comes down to leadership and you saw what happens when leadership comes in with a very succinct plan, a product vision and the ability to, to attract capital obviously. But, you know, the clean up, we have now a clean balance sheet. We have no debt, we have nothing and to negotiate out of those deals or within those partnerships. It was no miracle by my part, even though I led the transaction. Give me an example of what we're, how much of a mirror. Well, I mean, it, it was, again, this wasn't on anybody's bingo card again. Well, I'll take, I'll actually give the credit. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. But um while I led that effort, it was, we, we cut deals in the best way. That you cut deals, which is um alignment of interest. And everyone on the other side of the table that I had to deal with to clean it up. And then we got there was saw that this was essentially too important to the ecosystem to fail. Stable diffusion. Represented 80% of all the every single image that everyone in this audience saw in 2023. Just last year, 80% of them came from stable diffusion that's gigantic. And when you think about what that implies with a 5 million person active community that works on our models every single day that's growing every single day. That's a gigantic ecosystem that the infrastructure of this industry could not take a hit on. So I think it was part, it was, it was, it was the alignment of interest with those parties and um uh you know, and our determination to make sure that that was articulated. And, but I mean, the reason I say you should take a lot of credit for it is, I mean, really bringing everybody along at a time like that is, I mean, that is true, hardship and that is hard and it's in doing it too when, you know, I mean, frankly, you weren't even ceo the company. And so, I mean, I think when you think about how difficult it is to lead a company during, you know, tumultuous times and during super high growth and, and change, that's hard when you are the CEO but, but, but what about when you're actually just coming in and, and sort of coalescing, you know, all of the different groups from, you know, investors, employees to partners, et cetera. And I think that, you know, that's what gave me greater and greater conviction at every step along the way, was just seeing how prime actually executed through that. Well, controversial past leadership has left the company but a lot of the early investors in the company, including including Co two and Lightspeed, they left and then they came back. Yeah. How did that go? How did that happen? Is that incredible? I'm very, I'll be honest, I'm surprised that I think that says it all, you know, and I think they really re underwrote to this leadership team but also understood deeply the opportunity. Co two left the board, they didn't invest anymore. Same with Lightspeed, same with sound ventures. So not only did all of three of them reinvest into this round, um their pro rata that they were allowed on only the best we did it, we did it as a rights offering in, in, in some cases even more than their pro rata. And not only did they did that but coach who actually rejoined the board and is on our board again now too. So it was uh it is extraordinary because I think they saw that progress being made and kind of the positioning of re establishing the leadership position. The reason that everybody is interested in the company is because they were so successful. If they weren't successful, you wouldn't have these, like, no one would care. What are those conversations like that? What was the vision that you, that you sold them on? Well, again, it was alignment of interest, I think in those, you mean for the other investors, it was really well there, it was really my pre previous success. And yeah, yeah. And I was gonna say, I mean, I think one of the really exciting opportunities here that, that we saw is a new investor coming in was essentially um you know, where we think that there is great opportunity in general A I right now is, is really when you're sort of coupling the models with the application there. And I think these models were phenomenal are phenomenal continue to be and then having a, a leadership team that's so deeply throwing stuff around under understands the the do exactly heads up um is really an extraordinary opportunity. And I, and I think that's again why I mean for us as new investors coming in and, and we are based in Los Angeles, New York and Silicon Valley. But we, we really understand the media ecosystem and knew how deeply prime understood that and, and was connected in that ecosystem. That's really that, that transition because we were, you know, the first evolution of A I was really the foundation of the frontier models. And then it was quickly seeing this base, um because people always talk about the application layer and it is true that value is there. But being able to understand and fine tune models all the way into a core model is extremely important for you to set up success on the application layer. So I don't think, well, you know, some people believe, uh you know, foundational models are, is raced to the bottom. I I, you know, I uh I tend to agree as a stand alone. Um We're really that application, the applied research and application layer, which is a race to the top, but that's a race to the top that we can have an advantage winning when we understand the entire entire software uh stack all the way down to the chip. Now, I want to talk a little bit more about the board coach. He's back. You da are on the board. James Cameron is also on the board. Yeah. Who here has heard of James, I actually who doesn't know who James Cameron is? Avatar? Avatar? Yeah, just a just stream avatar. Um How did that happen? What does he bring to the board? So I worked. So when I was CEO of Weta Digital, we made Avatar two made every frame of that movie with, with uh James Cameron. And so um when I built the application layer at WETA and eventually sold it to unity, uh you know, he had a front row seat at everything that we were, I was doing and uh with me and the engineering team. And so when this came about, um I was in constant dialogue with, with uh with, with James. And, um and in fact, pulled him in early in the year before I joined the CEO and I said, hey, I think this actually could be. And he said what he said, he agreed. He said he agreed, you mean about that? This could be, this has the potential. Of course. Well, I don't think he would have invested or joined the board if he didn't, I assume. Yeah, that makes sense. That track. But even back then before you joined, before it was before this full turnaround happened. Yeah. Well, no, it was definitely, it would mean he agreed, it would be hilarious if he did join the board without thinking about that. No, no, no, no, no, no. Well, there was no board for him to join at the time, right? I wasn't even the CEO of the company. So what I mean was he agreed was, was the question that I posed to him, which was, hey, I think this is worth looking at and like, let's really dig deep into this. And like Dana was saying, we dug very, very, very deep into the talent pool. Like we didn't, we didn't invest and I didn't join the company until I met every single person at the company myself. Um and Sean and, you know, we dug very deep in the talent pool was so depth, was so deep. I was so surprised because there's a lot of also like in no offense, the media kind of, you know, over exaggerates in both directions many times. And then so II I was reading but she's laughing because it's true. Um But I was so shocked because this was because there were some departures and there's other, you know, spinoffs that came off of it. But we were so um so happy to see that not only did the depth of talent still stay there. And there was over 90 people within the core and applied research team, but they had two other things that were, that you that are beyond just their genius and they were dedicated and they were very passionate about stable diffusion. And I found, and I, I told this and just recently, um during all that, you know, that was what feels like years ago, um was months ago when I was meeting everybody and when we close the deal, there was somebody on the applied research team that said, we knew you were coming. This is even before the actual deal was announced and closed. And they said, and what's that? Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing statement to make meaning, not me, but like, you know, somebody was coming that was experienced leadership that could bring the vision that could bring the capital to the table and clean up the company because it was just, it was too important. Well, they might not have imagined that it was gonna be you, Sean Parker and James Cameron. But to be fair, who could have imagined that again? Everybody's surprised Bingo card. What is stability do to today? And what is the opportunity? It still it down for us here and now. So our vision is we're doing two fold is one is we're exploiting the commercial opportunities, significant commercial opportunities with our enterprise uh licensing and API revenues. And the second is we are now building the first, first full stack A I production pipeline for professional vi visual media content, professional video media content, defined as film and television, obviously gaming and marketing and advertising. What about you? The opportunity? That's where, where, where does, where does this land for you? What's the end game? It's, I mean, it's amazing because it really is sort of the thesis that we had laid out at the beginning, which is that, you know, there is a huge opportunity on the creative and production side of media to leverage A I in the creative community. And really, I mean, you know, if you think about it, we have this incredible product marketing genius and James Cameron on the board deeply involved and having that combined with this technology is so unique and being able to then apply it to those three verticals verticals that, you know, we at gray crop know very well. Um Having been involved with, you know, companies like Scope Le, uh which is a large gaming company which was sold uh last year, um, you know, early days of youtube with Maker Studios off the TV. So this is an area that we're in, you know, mountain on the advertising side. We just think there's such tremendous opportunity. Um Sorry. Yeah. No, no said perfectly, but I, I actually don't know how to do it any other way. Um I think it's pretty because I did it at Weta. That way, we were, there was no space between the art and the science. Uh We worked with some of the biggest directors in the world. We made the last 10 Marvel movies and, you know, obviously avatar one and two and we worked very, very closely with the directors. And uh that was such a great um experience for me because people ask me all the time after we sold, after I sold the, the pipeline to unity. It's like, how did you know what products to build? How did you who designed your product pipeline? I was like, it's easy. I just asked the directors what they wanted. And so it, and it, it's true. So it, it became the product strategy, the product road map, the go to market strategy, everything and also the Q A everything is sort of built into one. And uh the confusing thing I find is how am I supposed to build uh artist tools without an artist as a partner at the highest level of the company? So that's just it, it's my, it's my muscle memory. Now, let's imagine for the sake of argument, we're sitting here in a year, us and a couple and a couple of our nearest and dearest. What has stability achieved? What does stability look like a year from now? Like robust managed service on our um which is growing at multiple, multiple, the, the, the, the head of marketing told me I couldn't tell you how uh in front of everybody, how much we've grown. But it's been extraordinary. Exactly. I would like to, I would like to because it's a gigantic growth. I know. I know. I blame you. Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you in a year, I think, let me then on here you can ask her the um uh so she wouldn't let me talk, but it's, it's incredible. It's triple digit growth and the uh and so I think we're gonna continue to see that and I think that we're gonna be seeing um several breakthroughs in individual shot elements. We have a very different approach. We have a professional approach to content creation. We don't have one text to video model that has one output that combines like a gazillion, different workflows into one that's actually not how professional content is created, professional, created in shot elements and then they're composited together, by the way, this is where he's going to go really, really deep because he doesn't understand this thing at all. Models. Now, if you want the, we're sadly at time. But that's, that's, that's for, it's ok. I can go over. I mean, they all came and way more interesting. Thank you and Dana so much. That is all the time we have. I wish we could. Thank you so much.