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Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO of Stability AI, speaks during the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, June 22, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Beleaguered artificial intelligence startup Stability is laying off employees after the exit of its controversial former CEO Emad Mostaque.

Stability, which is behind the popular Stable Diffusion large language model, made more than 20 of its employees redundant to “right-size” the business after a period of unsustainable growth, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC.

The company’s newly appointed co-CEOs Shan Shan Wong and Christian Laforte told employees in an email Wednesday night that the firm needed to “restructure parts of the business, which will sadly mean saying goodbye to some colleagues.”

“Those who are affected by this have been notified individually and we will be supporting them throughout this period,” Wong and Laforte, who were previously chief operating officer and chief technology officer at the company, respectively, said in the internal memo.

Stability AI’s layoffs amount to about 10% of its global headcount, according to publicly available data online which shows the firm employs around 200 people in total.

The employees affected by the measures are mostly on the operational side of the business and have been notified of their redundancies, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke with CNBC under condition of anonymity as they were not able to speak publicly on the matter.

Last month, Stability announced its former CEO, Mostaque, was leaving the company to “pursue decentralized AI,” and would be replaced by Wong and Laforte.

Mostaque’s departure follows media reports throwing doubt on his credentials.

A June 2023 Forbes report said that Mostaque misled people including his own investors about receiving a master’s degree from Oxford University, as well as the nature of a partnership with Amazon which Stability characterized as a strategic deal but was nothing more than a standard cloud computing leasing contract.

Mostaque’s response at the time was that several of Forbes’ allegations were “false accusations and misrepresentations.” He said he didn’t receive his Oxford University degree because he didn’t attend his graduation ceremony but had arranged to receive his degrees by post.

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He also doubled down on the deal with Amazon and it’s cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services by describing it as a “strategic business alliance” that saw AWS build an “incredibly rare dedicated compute cluster” completed to the requirements of Stability.

Stability AI is still searching for a permanent CEO to fill the top leadership role. The company said it continues to operate as normal and is still releasing new products, having only recently announced developer APIs, or application programming interfaces, for its Stable Diffusion 3 AI model.

You can read the full memo from co-CEOs Wong and Christian Laforte below:

Dear team,

As you know, over the past couple of weeks the Leadership team have been working hard on a strategic plan to reduce our cost-base, strengthen support with our investors and partners, and enable our teams to continue developing and releasing innovative products. 

Following a review of the global team, we have determined the need to restructure parts of the business, which will sadly mean saying goodbye to some colleagues. Those who are affected by this have been notified individually and we will be supporting them throughout this period.  

These decisions have not been taken lightly and they are intended to right-size parts of the business and focus our operations, which is critical to setting us on a more sustainable path – and to put us in the best possible position to continue developing cutting-edge models and products. Products like the Stable Diffusion 3 API strengthen our deep-tech leadership and demonstrate our unique, systemic importance to the AI ecosystem.

We will meet as planned on Thursday for our regular town hall and we encourage you to ask any questions you might have of our Leadership team in the form that will be sent out shortly. In the meantime, please feel free to discuss any concerns with your manager.

We would like to thank everyone for their dedication and contributions. We recognize the challenges we face, but we have a plan in place. Through the hard work and commitment of this team, we are making progress every day, moving us steadily in the right direction.

Best wishes,

Shan Shan & Christian 

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Read more CNBC tech news

The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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