London-based startup Stability AI has appointed a new CTO as it works to scale its generative AI business. The move comes after a turbulent 2023 for the company, which saw more than 10 senior execs leave the business.
Its new CTO, Christian Laforte, who was previously VP of research at the company, has been in the role since January 2024, according to his LinkedIn. Tom Mason, who was appointed CTO in July 2022, is still listed as CTO on LinkedIn but three former Stability employees, who asked to remain anonymous, tell Sifted he has stepped back from the role since Laforte’s promotion.
Laforte’s appointment to CTO signals that the company — which made its name by helping to fund the training of image generation model Stable Diffusion — is moving its strategy more towards language models, according to one of the former employees. Laforte previously oversaw Stability’s research teams across “language, science, speech and audio”, according to his LinkedIn.
Changes at the top
The latest shakeup of Stability’s leadership team comes after at least six senior departures on the tech side of the business last year, which saw the company lose a VP of product, a VP of engineering, a VP of R&D, a head of research and two large language model leads.
Senior departures have contributed to what some employees have seen as a lack of clear direction at the company.
“Decisions about what we were developing right now were changing monthly,” said one of the former employees.
Stability has not commented publicly on the appointment of its new CTO and declined a request for comment.
