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Former WETA Digital CEO Prem Akkaraju, Sean Parker Join Stability AI As It Closes Funding Round

Jill Goldsmith
·2 min read

L.A.-based Stability AI named media and tech exec Prem Akkaraju CEO and Napster founder Sean Parker executive chair as the imaging, language, code and audio generative AI company closed an initial investment round.

The fresh capital — although it’s not clear how much — and new leadership “will be instrumental in accelerating Stability AI’s growth and ability to deliver best-in-class generative AI products into the market for consumer and enterprise use,” said the company, which was said to be facing a cash crunch.

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Akkaraju, who has worked for years on meeting points for entertainment and tech, said Stability AI is “now in an ideal position to spearhead the real convergence of generative AI and studio content.” The company’s “world-class team, breakthrough models and unique developer network attracted me to take on the CEO role.”

He and Parker have worked together before, co-founding SR Labs, the premium home viewing venture first known as Screening Room. Parker was also an investor and on the board of Weta Digital, the Oscar-winning visual effects house created by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh that’s behind creatures from Gollum to King Kong.

Stability AI’s investor group includes institutions Greycroft, Coatue Management, Sound Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and O’Shaughnessy Ventures, as well as individuals with Parker, Akkaraju, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Robert Nelsen.

Parker, entrepreneur, philanthropist and former (and first) Facebook president, joins the board, whose members include Greycroft’s Dana Settle, Coatue’s Colin Bryant, and Akkaraju. He said the new investment  “will enable the creation of even more powerful models and allow the community to continue pushing the boundaries of human creativity.”

Stability AI said its text-to-image models are the most liked on the open-source AI community called Hugging Face. Stable Diffusion, Stability’s flagship model, has had over 150 million downloads and played a foundational role in generating online AI-generated images. The company’s most recent release, Stable Diffusion 3, is currently at the top of the download charts with over 2 million downloads since launching earlier this month.

The company is also surrounded by one of the largest and most active AI open-source communities. “I’m committed to the open-source principles that Stability AI was built upon,” Parker said.

With the new appointments, Jim O’Shaughnessy retires as chairman. Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte, who have served as interim co-CEOs since March, 2024, will remain with the company as COO and CTO, respectively.

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