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2023 has been a significant year for Stability AI, a startup focused on generative AI. They’ve been busy unveiling one model after another and are now introducing a new membership model to support this ongoing development.
Founded in 2019, Stability AI has garnered considerable investment, including a $101 million round announced in 2022. The company began with the stable diffusion text-to-image generation AI model and has explored various revenue streams. Most of their models have been made freely available for researchers.
The new membership model aims to standardize the commercial use of Stability AI’s models, facilitating broader enterprise applications and enabling other companies to build businesses around these models.
The memberships come in different tiers: a free tier for personal and research use, a professional tier at $20 per month, and an enterprise tier with custom pricing. Stability AI is committed to keeping its models accessible. The code and weights will be available for all tiers, similar to the Meta Llama model.
Stability AI’s models have previously been available through various channels, including their Clipdrop site. The new membership model, however, is designed for self-hosted applications, allowing users full control over their data and products. In contrast, Clipdrop remains a consumer-facing site for experimenting with Stability AI models.
Under the new membership approach, existing usage remains unchanged. New users will need a membership for both commercial and non-commercial use. Members will get early access to new models and updates as they are released.
Even free members will benefit from early access to future models, invitations to public forums, and the chance to be featured on Stability AI channels. Commercial users, especially startups and large companies, are expected to find great value in this new approach. The company believes this model will provide a steady revenue stream that will grow over time.
Stability AI is actively rolling out new models. In 2023 alone, they introduced SDXL, a high-end text-to-image model; SDXL Turbo, a faster version; StableLM Zephyr 3B for text content generation; Stable Audio for audio generation; Stable Video for video generation; and StableCode for code generation. Recently, they released the Stable Zero123 model for 3D image creation, indicating a shift towards generative media in the coming year.