Lady Gaga hosted a candlelit gathering at her Malibu estate where Sean Parker and Prem Akkaraju mingled with guests and investors. Prem Akkaraju and Parker had prior business ventures together, including an attempted movie streaming platform and acquisition of a visual effects company. An investor at the event warned that Stability AI, creator of Stable Diffusion, was close to collapse and urged Akkaraju to transform it into a Hollywood-friendly AI. Stability AI achieved early success with Stable Diffusion in 2022 but faced a severe cash crisis. U.S. film and television production has fallen about 40 percent since 2022 amid rising costs, overseas competition, and prolonged labor disputes.
Prem Akkaraju, one of Parker's close friends and business partners, arrived in a tailored suit, his thick hair coifed to perfection. The two men had known each other since Parker was at Facebook and Akkaraju was in the music industry. Over the years, they'd tried unsuccessfully to launch a movie streaming platform together and-much more successfully-had taken over a renowned visual effects company. Lately they had been talking about starting an AI venture.
That evening at Gaga's, Akkaraju found himself sitting next to an investor in Stability AI, the company that launched the wildly popular text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion in 2022. Despite its early success, Stability was "circling the drain," the investor recalls. It was "within days of not having options." He told Akkaraju: "You should take Stability and make it into the Hollywood-friendly AI model."
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