The exodus of high-ranking managers continues at the London-based AI startup Stability AI, which operates Stable Diffusion, one of several image generators that gained massive hype last year. In October, Chief People Officer Ozden Onder and Chief Legal Officer Adam Avrunin seem to have left the company, as reported by Bloomberg, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Stable Diffusion is an open-source software similar to Midjourney or OpenAI's Dall-E, capable of generating images on demand. A year ago, Stability AI raised around $100 million in funding from US tech investor Coatue and US venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others. During that funding round, the company was valued at $1 billion.

Founded in 2019, the startup was considered a European hopeful in generative AI. At the time of the funding round, Stable Diffusion reportedly had ten million daily users, according to founder and CEO Emad Mostaque. However, the ongoing venture capital boom in generative AI has led to the emergence of over 100 startups in this field in Europe alone.

Moreover, Mostaque faced several accusations in recent months. Allegedly, he made misleading and false statements about himself, the creation of Stable Diffusion, and the company's economic development. In investor presentations, he reportedly claimed that the World Bank, OECD, and WHO were partners of Stability AI. Claims that these organizations deny, as reported by Forbes in June. Additionally, former employees stated that wages were often not paid or with delay. Stability AI is also facing copyright infringement lawsuits from artists and US photo agency Getty Images. The plaintiffs accuse the startup of unlawfully training its algorithm with human-generated works.

Avrunin and Onder joined Stability AI in January and March 2023, respectively, but like many other former managers, they worked for the company for less than a year. Several executives, including Christian Cantrell (former VP of Product), Daniel Jeffries (former Chief Information Officer), David Ha (former Head of Research), Ren Ito (former Chief Operating Officer), Scott Draves (former VP Engineering), and Nathan Lile (former Chief of Staff), left the startup shortly after joining.

They all brought decades of experience from the tech and AI industries to the startup. Cantrell, for example, worked at Adobe for almost 20 years before his move. Draves and Ha both had several years of experience at Google. Avrunin came from the video communication service Zoom, and Onder had previously worked at the software company Atlassian for almost five years.

Stability AI declined to comment on the recent departures. Nonetheless, in August, the company emphasized that despite these setbacks, the workforce was growing. They reported a 30% increase in the number of employees over the past six months, as communicated to the online magazine "Sifted" at that time.