Who is Emad Mostaque?

Emad Mostaque is a British mathematician and computer scientist who was born in Jordan and spent his early childhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mostaque is best known as the founder and CEO of Stability AI and its free and open-source text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion.

Category		Details
Full Name		Emad Mostaque
Date of Birth		1983
Education		Master of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Oxford
Early Career		Worked in various roles in hedge funds and asset management, including at DE Shaw & Co. and Capula Investment Management
Major Companies Founded		Stability AI
Positions		Founder and CEO of Stability AI
Business Milestones		– 2015: Authored and promoted a roadmap for Open Access, advocating for transparency and accessibility in artificial intelligence research and development. – 2020: Founded Stability AI, focusing on developing open-source artificial intelligence technologies and promoting ethical AI. – 2021: Launched key projects under Stability AI, including open-source initiatives in machine learning and AI ethics. – 2022: Played a pivotal role in advancing AI research and applications, particularly in the field of generative models and open-source AI tools. – 2023: Continued to lead Stability AI in pioneering ethical AI practices and developing cutting-edge AI solutions, gaining recognition as a thought leader in the AI community. 2024: stepped down from Stability AI to pursue decentralized AI initiatives.

Table of Contents

Early career

Mostaque earned a master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Oxford University in 2005 before spending the next 13 years in the hedge fund industry.

For a time he worked as co-CIO of Capricorn Fund Managers and was responsible for the award-winning Emerging Markets hedge fund. Mostaque was also a hedge fund manager at Pictet where he oversaw global strategy and frontier funds focused on technology.

Later, Mostaque served as a strategist at Ecstrat and Rellgare where he advised governments and leading funds on geopolitics, markets, and technology.

Symmitree

Mostaque founded Symmitree in 2019 to provide disadvantaged citizens with a free smartphone and digital identity that would enable them to access previously unavailable services.

These included aid, payments, remittances, health, legal, banking, and other services critical to populations in need. However, according to Forbes, the project was shuttered around twelve months after it started.

Stability AI

In late 2020, Mostaque founded Stability AI with the mission to “build the foundation to activate humanity’s potential.”

Stability AI is an open-source generative AI company that has now amassed a community of more than 140,000 developers and seven research hubs worldwide.

The company believes its open-source ethos is the backbone of current innovative AI research in areas such as imaging, language, 3D content, audio, video, code, design, and biotech.

While there has been pressure to prioritize the safe development of AI over company profits, Stability AI has been a for-profit corporation since its inception. Mostaque believes this is the best way to enable open-source research to reach more people.

Stable Diffusion

The pioneering text-to-image model known as Stable Diffusion was released in November 2022. Development of the model was mostly funded by Mostaque himself and is powered by Amazon’s Ezra-1 UltraCluster supercomputer.

Despite Stability AI not having a clear business plan in place, Mostaque told machine learning engineer Yannic Kilcher that the company had already partnered with “governments and leading institutions” to sell the technology.

Mostaque also claimed in the interview with Kilcher that “We’ve negotiated massive deals so we’d be profitable at the door versus most money-losing big corporations.”

Future of artificial intelligence

In March 2023, Mostaque signed an open letter that called on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 (including the currently-being-trained GPT-5)”.

The letter, which was published by the Future of Life Institute, deals primarily with AI safety and notes that AI labs are locked in an arms race that could jeopardize the future of humanity.

In the process, Mostaque joined over 27,000 other signatories including Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Evan Sharp, Jean Tallinn, Andrew Yang, Stuart Russell, Yoshua Bengio, and Gary Marcus.

Key takeaways

Emad Mostaque is a British computer scientist who was born in Jordan and spent his early childhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mostaque is best known as the founder and CEO of Stability AI and its free and open-source text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion.
Mostaque earned a master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Oxford University in 2005 before spending the next 13 years in the hedge fund industry. He then founded Symmitree in 2019 to provide digital services to underprivileged citizens.
In late 2020, Mostaque founded Stability AI with the mission to “build the foundation to activate humanity’s potential.” One of the company’s most notable achievements is the text-to-image model known as Stable Diffusion which was released in November 2022.

Key Highlights

Emad Mostaque’s Background: Emad Mostaque is a British mathematician and computer scientist, born in Jordan, and spent his early childhood in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is best known as the founder and CEO of Stability AI and its text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion.
Education and Hedge Fund Career: Mostaque earned a master’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Oxford University in 2005. He spent the next 13 years in the hedge fund industry, working for companies like Capricorn Fund Managers and Pictet, overseeing global strategy and technology-focused frontier funds.
Symmitree: In 2019, Mostaque founded Symmitree, aiming to provide underprivileged citizens with free smartphones and digital identities, enabling them to access essential services like aid, payments, banking, and health. However, the project was shut down about a year after its inception.
Stability AI: Mostaque founded Stability AI in late 2020 with the goal to “activate humanity’s potential.” It is an open-source generative AI company with a large community of developers worldwide, working on various innovative AI research areas.
Stable Diffusion: Stability AI released Stable Diffusion in November 2022, a pioneering text-to-image model. The development was funded by Mostaque and powered by Amazon’s Ezra-1 UltraCluster supercomputer. Stability AI aims to make open-source research profitable through partnerships with governments and leading institutions.
AI Safety Advocacy: In March 2023, Mostaque signed an open letter published by the Future of Life Institute, calling on AI labs to pause training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. The letter highlights concerns about the arms race in AI development and its potential impact on humanity.
Notable Signatories: Mostaque joined over 27,000 other signatories, including prominent figures like Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Yoshua Bengio, Andrew Yang, and Gary Marcus, emphasizing the importance of AI safety.