Emad released his Web3+AI project, SchellingAI, more than 2 months after leaving his job.

Author: Little Black Rabbit Sam

Editor: Yang Xinyan

Editor-in-chief: Wang

01 Who is Emad Mostaque?

Emad Mostaque, born in April 1983, is a typical Aries. The biggest difference between him and people like Sun Yuchen is that Emad truly believes that AI can change the world and make our future better.

Emad was born into a Bengali Muslim family in Jordan. He was brought to the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, one month after his birth, and immigrated to the UK with his family at the age of seven.

When he was young, Emad's parents found that he was a very intelligent child, but he was always temperamental and liked to snatch toys from other children. In primary school, he liked to pull the braids of the girl in front of him, Charlotte. The incidence of ADHD in India and Bangladesh is one in a thousand, which broke his parents' hearts. In order to release Emad's restless energy and potential, Emad's father, Old Emad, who was a business lecturer in London, decided to give him special training: the "British Accent Training Program".

The original purpose of this program was to enable Emad to work as a tour guide and companion for Bangladeshi compatriots who come to the UK for travel and study, relying on his intelligence and authentic British accent.

As time passed, Emad's path of growth gradually changed a little…

02 The Reckless 20s

Emad's youth can be described as mysterious. The only thing known is that from the age of 10 to 19, he attended Westminster School, the top-ranked school in the UK, known as the "Oxford and Cambridge Manufacturing Machine".

Hurun and HSBC jointly released the 2024 Global High School Rankings

Westminster School ranks first in the global high school rankings

PS: It is unknown whether Emad, like Sun Yuchen, impressed the Oxford University admissions committee with an essay on "The Positioning and Development of Muslim Masses in the British Empire" and successfully obtained an offer from Oxford.

In any case, what we do know is that in 2002, at the age of 19, Emad, like countless of his predecessors, as a descendant of Bangladesh, entered one of the top two universities in the UK, Oxford University. Considering his outstanding language talent and abilities, it was difficult for him to achieve further success, so Emad decided to study computer science and mathematics to expand his knowledge in STEM fields.

Looking back now, this decision was very wise, because from the early 2000s to 2005, individuals who were proficient in STEM thinking and had the ability to communicate effectively were very rare.

Emad, with the wind at his back, graduated from university and married his lifelong love, Zehra Qureshi. They have two children and he started working in a hedge fund, trading in crude oil. Due to being a Muslim himself and his keen interest in helping the Muslim community create online forums and indirectly assisting with AI-related matters in his early 20s, Emad found his unfair advantage and began providing advice to various governments in the Middle East and Islamic countries. This paved the way for Emad to access top resources such as the United Nations, World Bank, and World Health Organization, laying a solid foundation for his future (although the United Nations, World Health Organization, and World Bank later denied any cooperation with Emad, it did not affect his ability to make money: this topic is a long story, but in short, Emad's audience was very receptive to his approach).

During the period from 2005 to 2020, while trading stocks and cryptocurrencies, Emad also established numerous companies and government cooperation projects.

Emad's cunning quickly made him a portfolio manager, and he invested in many electronic games and AI projects, reaping substantial profits. More than 10 years later, Emad summed up his life before Stability AI very incisively:

In his pursuit of helping the wealthy get wealthier, Emad also made a fortune. In August 2009, at the age of 26, Emad successfully purchased a 167-square-meter, 3-bedroom ground floor apartment in Iverna Gardens, at the junction of Chelsea and Kensington in London, for £1.7 million!

Just one year after the 2008 economic crisis, the market price of a similar apartment has now reached £3.25 million, a 91% increase from the time of Emad's purchase! Over 15 years, the property's annualized return has reached 4.4%. It must be said that people involved in investment indeed have extraordinary vision.

03 The Two Sides of Emad's AI Journey

Hold on a second, have you noticed that something seems a bit off? How does the story so far seem to unfold like the carefree tale of a second-generation immigrant's successful life?

Positive: Leaving the Hedge Fund, Curing His Autistic Son, and Embarking on the AI Path

Starting in 2011, Emad's son was diagnosed with autism, which forced him, as a "high-flying smart young guy," to pause his original career path.

Emad himself has a background in computer science and mathematics. When doctors told him that autism could not be cured or treated, Emad became truly interested in AI. He began to think, if traditional therapies were not effective, could he use AI in a disruptive way to solve the problem of autism? He wanted to use Elon Musk's "First Principle" principle to break down the problem.

First, he formed an AI team and collected all available literature on autism from the market to find commonalities. During the algorithm analysis process, they gradually converged on one direction: the balance of GABA-glutamate in the brain.

Finally, with the help of AI and doctors, Emad successfully helped his son, who has autism, improve his language skills and enter a regular school using the method of drug repurposing.

After completing his son's treatment, Emad returned to the hedge fund and began to seriously invest his energy in research related to medicine and autism. One notable work is that Emad was the technical architecture lead for the Collective and Augmented Intelligence Against COVID-19 (CAIAC) program at Stanford University.

Negative: A Different Story Behind the Scenes, 6 Failed Entrepreneurial Experiences in Chelsea

According to gov.uk, starting at the age of 30, Emad started 6 entrepreneurial ventures in his mansion. The first company was called ANANAS Network Company, which was promoted as a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the use of artificial intelligence for social welfare.

This company only had Emad and his cousin Aisha Qureshi (born in 1991) as employees and closed down after 5 years.

During 2013-2014, Emad registered and established 5 other companies in his mansion, with business directions ranging from Muslim consulting to venture capital. However, in these subsequent companies, Emad did not employ his cousin, but held sole ownership.

As expected, these companies also closed down within 1-5 years.

However, looking at Emad's analysis of the BTC peak in December 2017, he made a substantial profit by shorting the market during the period when BTC dropped from nearly $20,000 (December 2017) to $3,000 (December 2018). This perpetual contract shorting earned Emad a large sum of money, which may have been the result of his efforts to help his son with autism.

Standing at the Peak of the Wave: Founding Stability AI

Due to Emad's exceptional talent and success in the cryptocurrency market, he began to seriously consider the question, "Can I make a big deal in the AI era?"

The answer was yes. On November 4, 2019, just one mile from his home, Emad opened Stability AI above a chicken shop at Fora-United House (a co-working space similar to WeWork). This company unexpectedly turned Emad from an unknown hedge fund manager and expert chicken chef into a global sensation in the AI world.

Due to his deep understanding of the crypto world, Emad initially wanted to make Stability a DAO, but later found that given the current state of DAO development, this was not feasible. So, he ultimately chose a centralized approach. If you look at Stability AI's angel investors, they are Seed Club Ventures, a few crypto funds, and in the second round in October 2022, Lightspeed Venture Partners came in with a $100 million investment.

The lead investment by Lightspeed was made after the release of Stable Diffusion. According to Emad, Stability AI provided GPU support and sponsorship for the technical team behind the Stable Diffusion model and helped lead the development, headed by the renowned tall professor from Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich, Björn Ommer.

The Controversy Sparked by Stable Diffusion

However, is this really the case? Forbes revealed in a lengthy article that the source code for Stable Diffusion, which brought Stability AI to fame, was actually written by another group of researchers.

In June 2023, Kenrick Cai, a Chinese full-time Forbes contributor, detailedly criticized Emad and the big secrets behind his business empire.

Kenrick Cai

There's a lot of content here, so let's get to the point:

Stable Diffusion is actually based on the Latent Diffusion Model developed by Professor Björn Ommer's team at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) in Munich (published at the computer vision conference CVPR 2022). In June, Emad saw this achievement at the CVPR conference and chose to provide computing power to Björn Ommer's team. With the added computing power, the Latent Diffusion Model became stronger and more stable. In August, this optimized new model was named Stable Diffusion and released under the name of Stability AI.

The early participant company, Runway, did not receive the same reputation and valuation as Stability AI. It can be understood that Emad, with his keen insight and generous GPU donations, gained the naming rights for Stable Diffusion and firmly tied it to his Stability AI!

Latent Diffusion model (Stable Diffusion)

Within a few days of the release of Stable Diffusion, Stability AI received a $100 million investment from Coatue and Lightspeed funds. This investment was 8 times the funds raised earlier by Emad.

This round of funding directly pushed Stability AI's valuation to over $1 billion, even though the company was not yet profitable.

However, subsequent press releases only mentioned Stability AI as the company behind Stable Diffusion, without acknowledging the contributions from the German university and one of New York's video generation giants, Runway.

Professor Ommer was understandably resentful and hoped that his lab would also receive recognition. However, the news department at his university was on vacation at the time (typical relaxed Germans).

In an interview with Forbes, Professor Ommer said, "As far as I know, Stability AI had no idea about Latent Diffusion when we released it. They only jumped on the bandwagon later."

After experiencing a series of dramas, Professor Ommer said, "The lesson I learned from this is that if your company has a powerful news department, you can freely change facts and reshape history."

It can be said that Emad deeply understands the principle of "the latecomers will be the winners," and successfully manipulated Professor Ommer from the University of Munich and Runway's CEO Valenzuela:

In this way, Emad successfully stole the fruits of victory and, as a newcomer, gained great honor in the field of academic research in Germany and the United States.

Despite controversy, Emad was still the winner in the AIGC field in 2022. By October, Stable Diffusion had reached 10 million daily active users. In May 2023, the White House nominated Stability, along with Microsoft and NVIDIA, as one of the seven leading AI developers to jointly launch the Federal AI Security Program (after partnering with the United Nations and the World Health Organization, Emad now had the White House on his side).

He had dinner with Jeff Bezos, and the reclusive Google founder Sergey Brin also made a rare appearance at the Stability AI launch event. After the successful funding in October, the team quickly grew, with a former NVIDIA director of research and development, a leader from Google Brain, and student authors from Professor Ommer's lab behind Stable Diffusion, among others.

Emad with Jeff Bezos

In a deep-dive article by Forbes, Emad was accused of:

Academic fraud—Emad did not actually have a master's degree. In fact, the master's degree from Oxford University is automatically awarded after a few years of undergraduate studies.

Unpaid wages—Former intern Eric reported issues with unpaid wages, stating, "I'm still waiting for the reimbursement I was supposed to receive in August last year."

Misappropriation of funds—Tens of thousands of pounds were transferred from Stability AI's company account to Emad's wife's personal account.

False claims against Amazon and Midjourney—Emad described Midjourney as part of his ecosystem, but Midjourney's founder David Holz stated that Mostaque only provided a small donation and had no connection to Midjourney and Stability AI.

Copyright infringement—Stability AI faced two lawsuits related to training commercial models using the LAION-5B dataset in violation of copyright laws.

Despite the controversies, Emad remained active in the public eye, "flitting between internet celebrities, investment institutions, and the media like a drunken butterfly." Even after announcing his resignation in March 2024, he remained active in various circles, showing no signs of being affected by negative news.

Exclusive: The Truth Behind Emad and Stability AI

Stay tuned for the exclusive story from Qingke.

But according to our exclusive investigation, the real Emad is not as bad as portrayed. "Emad is a very pure person, especially in terms of research. He is sincere. Although he may seem erratic and unreliable to ordinary people, he genuinely loves AI. It's not about making money for him. In the end, when Emad left Stability AI, he did not receive much incentive and profit, but he still has no regrets," said Xiao Ming from next door. Due to his Asperger's syndrome, he is often charming, passionate, and kind, but also forgetful and disorganized.

Real Situation 1: The Difficult Financing Process of Stability AI and the Huge Conflict with Seed Round Investor Coatue Led to Resignation

Facing the exorbitant server costs of Stable Diffusion at the time, Emad made every effort to connect with every investor and institution willing to talk to him. It wasn't until the seed round financing of $101 million from Coatue and Lightspeed that Emad settled the outstanding GPU server fees owed to AWS.

After Coatue's partner Sri Viswanath joined the board of Stability AI, the company's strategic confusion and frequent changes angered Viswanath. Despite praising founder Emad's vision, he later lost interest in the company. Coatue, behind Viswanath, demanded that Stability provide product plans and roadmaps, but there was no follow-up after the documents were submitted.

Sri Viswanath (Coatue Partner, Stanford University Graduate)

In early 2023, Viswanath's suspicions about Emad intensified, leading to a suggestion to replace the CEO. In June of the same year, Forbes exposed negative news about Emad, exacerbating the conflict between the two parties. Coatue attempted to help with recruitment and publicity, but after the news broke, they distanced themselves from Stability AI, and the relationship between Viswanath and Emad deteriorated.

By the end of 2023, Emad's relationship with investors further deteriorated, and the seed round lead investors Coatue and Lightspeed announced their exit from the board. Due to conflicts arising from Intel's investment, Coatue relinquished its seat on October 5. On October 24, Coatue demanded Emad's resignation and initiated sale negotiations, requiring the public disclosure of compensation information and future bonuses to be approved by non-executive directors.

It can be said that Emad's betrayal by Coatue and Lightspeed is also a significant factor in Stability AI's current situation. In March 2024, when Emad announced his resignation, he never publicly spoke ill of Coatue and Lightspeed. Compared to the actions of Coatue and Lightspeed, Emad's courage and determination to shoulder responsibility far exceed that of ordinary people.

Real Situation 2: Professor Björn Ommer Overclaims His Contribution to Stable Diffusion

Professor Ommer's criticism of Stability AI may be somewhat exaggerated. In fact, Emad initially collaborated with Ommer's doctoral students, not Ommer himself. The success of Stable Diffusion is mainly attributed to the efforts of Robin Rombach and others, not Ommer's CVPR 2022 paper.

Without Emad's strong promotion, Robin Rombach might not have become so famous. At the time, publicly releasing a model of several hundred megabytes was almost impossible. Stable Diffusion was released in August 2022, more than six months before Llama. It can be said that without Emad, the entire generative AI ecosystem might be very different. The open-sourcing of Stable Diffusion undoubtedly marked a significant change in the history of AI model ecosystems, and the contribution to Hugging Face, also invested by Coatue, is indelible. It is precisely because of this that Huggingface has almost monopolized the industrial application market of Diffusion models with the open-source framework diffusers.

From this perspective, Ommer's accusations may be somewhat exaggerated. His anger may be due to Stability AI not directly paying him fees. However, throughout the process, Stability AI bore all the training costs of the model, and doctoral students like Robin Rombach received corresponding compensation.

Real Situation 3: Runway ML Deceived Stability AI, Leading to a Passive Position with the Early Release of Stable Diffusion v1.5

Looking at this incident from another angle: Patrick Esser, the former Tech Lead at Runway and one of the authors of the paper behind Stable Diffusion, left Runway in 2023 to join Stability AI and work on SD3 with Robin Rombach. They then started a new company called Blackforest Labs (incubated by A16Z).

"If there was no problem with Runway, why would PE leave Runway to join Stability AI? From this perspective, perhaps the attitudes of insiders towards Runway and Stability AI can be seen. Perhaps those directly involved are the clearest."

Real Situation 4: Treating Employees with Generosity, but Accidentally Forgetting His Own Matters

Nathan Lile, former Chief of Staff at Stability AI who often traveled with Emad, recalled an incident when Emad's phone had Wi-Fi issues during a layover. Emad went into the terminal to find better Wi-Fi and a new SIM card. "Half an hour later, he came back with a new pair of AirPods, which he gave to me as a gift," said Nathan.

"I was completely touched by Emad's thoughtfulness!" Nathan said. It was an unexpected surprise. Emad said it was to reward Nathan's hard work, so he paid for it himself! Recalling the moment, Nathan said, "I remember how his eyes sparkled with anticipation when Emad asked if I had experienced spatial audio."

While Nathan was playing with the gift, Emad suddenly realized something: "I seem to have forgotten to buy a new SIM card!"

07 Farewell to Pure AI, Embracing Web3

After experiencing "a bunch of bureaucracies" in the Web2 world, Emad angrily chose to embrace Web3. Here, there are luxury cars and beautiful women, as well as a mature unregulated trading market (intentionally creating this effect). ```

After resigning for more than 2 months, Emad launched his Web3+AI project: SchellingAI.

According to Emad, the project aims to support open-source models, datasets, and source code through token issuance, but specific information is not available.

It's already August, but SchellingAI's official Twitter account is still empty. It seems that Emad and his Web3 team have delayed the project again. They promised to launch the token on July 20th, but as of the time of writing, it's still empty.

There isn't even an official website… This is in line with everyone's perception of Emad…

As I come to the end, my feeling is that the remarkable Bangladeshi Emad Mostaque has set a benchmark for his own life, completing a life journey that "others cannot imitate and surpass."

Let's hope his Web3 project can bring something different to everyone!

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