4 ms·

On what business model exactly?

elil17 4y ago
According to the article, they plan to train private models. They claim to have done R&D that makes them more efficient at training models.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Does that sound like a $1 billion business to you? Even at 6 figure profit per model, they are going to need to build up a huge sales arm to do enough business for that valuation. I think they are expecting to become some sort of artist's tool, but since the model is open source and artist's tend to have good GPUs, Adobe can crush them by putting their own model (or a similar proprietary model from Adobe) into photoshop.
  - elil17 4y ago
    It does not at all. I agree with you.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    It does not imo but also seems like a cheap way to back a possibly asymmetric group. The valuation is not the hurdle for investors, as they will have seniority (likely with a multiplier) in any liquidity event. Does it seem like this group is moving quickly and making waves in a potentially huge market? Yes. Is this still a lot of money and very risky? Also yes.
inawarminister 4y ago
DreamStudio got one million users already, generating 17 million images. Granting that most people don't pay in (I got $2 credit for 200 generations by logging in), a $10/1000 images is still, ah, good enough I'd say. Especially if they stayed fresh by agglutinating all the advances in the open ecosystem.
- ShamelessC 4y ago
  You aren’t factoring in the cost of running the model on GPU instances. They might make a bit, not sure if it’s enough to satisfy their investors.
  - napier 4y ago
    The investors are buying into a toolset for what will potentially become open source AGI that is already blowing the competition out of the water in terms of capabilities, speed of development, and access/reach. Add together large language models with text and code interpretation/generation + diffusion + vision + speech and sound + embodiment = what might you get? It's unlikely investors care more than an inkling about the cashflow positivity of a (really fun to use, admittedly awesome) stock image synthesis engine other than its demonstrated impact as a stepping stone and buzz generator. I suspect their pitch was a little bit broader in scope than making Getty redundant. VC exit is over a 10+ year horizon -- people writing cheques are looking to own a piece of the future, as is the case with all catchy narratives, but in this case the future is already here and publicly disclosed progress in the field appears to be accelerating rapidly in no small part due to Stability AI and the research communities they support.
    - mark_l_watson 4y ago
      Leading to AGI? I have been using deep learning professionally for about seven years (and neural networks since the 1980s with a commercial product and I wrote the model for SAIC’s bomb detector they did for the FAA). Personally, as awesomely useful as deep learning is, I don’t see the path to AGI. I think AGI will be a hybrid of DL, GOFAI, and things not yet invented.
      - ShamelessC 4y ago
        Sure but the comment is still an appealing pitch to investors, and probably can be read broadly to include "things not yet invented". Out of curiosity - what is GOFAI?
mrslave 4y ago
Access to patents?

According to the article, they plan to train private models. They claim to have done R&D that makes them more efficient at training models.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Does that sound like a $1 billion business to you? Even at 6 figure profit per model, they are going to need to build up a huge sales arm to do enough business for that valuation. I think they are expecting to become some sort of artist's tool, but since the model is open source and artist's tend to have good GPUs, Adobe can crush them by putting their own model (or a similar proprietary model from Adobe) into photoshop.
- elil17 4y ago
  It does not at all. I agree with you.
- qeternity 4y ago
  It does not imo but also seems like a cheap way to back a possibly asymmetric group. The valuation is not the hurdle for investors, as they will have seniority (likely with a multiplier) in any liquidity event. Does it seem like this group is moving quickly and making waves in a potentially huge market? Yes. Is this still a lot of money and very risky? Also yes.

inawarminister 4y ago

DreamStudio got one million users already, generating 17 million images. Granting that most people don't pay in (I got $2 credit for 200 generations by logging in), a $10/1000 images is still, ah, good enough I'd say. Especially if they stayed fresh by agglutinating all the advances in the open ecosystem.

ShamelessC 4y ago
You aren’t factoring in the cost of running the model on GPU instances. They might make a bit, not sure if it’s enough to satisfy their investors.
- napier 4y ago
  The investors are buying into a toolset for what will potentially become open source AGI that is already blowing the competition out of the water in terms of capabilities, speed of development, and access/reach. Add together large language models with text and code interpretation/generation + diffusion + vision + speech and sound + embodiment = what might you get? It's unlikely investors care more than an inkling about the cashflow positivity of a (really fun to use, admittedly awesome) stock image synthesis engine other than its demonstrated impact as a stepping stone and buzz generator. I suspect their pitch was a little bit broader in scope than making Getty redundant. VC exit is over a 10+ year horizon -- people writing cheques are looking to own a piece of the future, as is the case with all catchy narratives, but in this case the future is already here and publicly disclosed progress in the field appears to be accelerating rapidly in no small part due to Stability AI and the research communities they support.
  - mark_l_watson 4y ago
    Leading to AGI? I have been using deep learning professionally for about seven years (and neural networks since the 1980s with a commercial product and I wrote the model for SAIC’s bomb detector they did for the FAA). Personally, as awesomely useful as deep learning is, I don’t see the path to AGI. I think AGI will be a hybrid of DL, GOFAI, and things not yet invented.
    - ShamelessC 4y ago
      Sure but the comment is still an appealing pitch to investors, and probably can be read broadly to include "things not yet invented". Out of curiosity - what is GOFAI?

mrslave 4y ago

Access to patents?