Stability is the company behind Stable Diffusion, a powerful, free and open-source text-to-image generator that launched in August.

Stability AI, an open source AI company driven by a community of developers that launched the highly successful, free-to-use, text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion, has raised a $101 million, oversubscribed round led by Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and O’Shaughnessy Ventures LLC. (CISION PR NEWSWIRE)

A Bloomberg report said the funding round valued Stability at about $1 billion, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Stability was founded by Emad Mostaque, who said: “AI promises to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. But we will only realize this potential if the technology is open and accessible to all. Stability AI puts the power back into the hands of developer communities and opens the door for ground-breaking new applications. An independent entity in this space supporting these communities can create real value and change.”

Stable Diffusion, the flagship product of the company, has been downloaded and licensed by more than 200,000 developers globally. The consumer-facing web application DreamStudio already has more than 1.5 million users.

“At Lightspeed, we believe that an independent company like Stability AI is best positioned to democratize generative AI. The company’s open-source model, along with its collaboration with AI developer communities, has allowed it to innovate rapidly and make the technology freely available to people everywhere,” said Gaurav Gupta, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

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