Stability AI

Overview

Stability AI revolutionized generative AI by open-sourcing Stable Diffusion in August 2022, enabling anyone to run state-of-the-art image generation locally. This contrasted with proprietary models like DALL-E 2 and Midjourney, catalyzing explosive growth in AI art, research, and commercial applications. The company's mission: make AI accessible through open-source models while building sustainable business through APIs and enterprise services. Key releases: SD 1.5 (2022), SDXL (2023), SD3 (2024), SD3.5 (2024), plus audio, video, and 3D models. Business model: Open weights + commercial API + enterprise licensing.

Key Products (October 2025)

• Stable Diffusion 3.5: Latest image model, 8B params, MMDiT architecture
• SDXL: Popular 2.3B param model, 1024×1024 native resolution
• SD 1.5: Legacy but widely used 890M param model
• Stable Audio 2.0: Text-to-audio generation, 44.1kHz, up to 3 minutes
• Stable Video Diffusion: Video generation from images
• Stable LM: Language models (StableLM 2, StableCode)
• API: Stability AI Platform API for commercial use
• DreamStudio: Web interface for generation

Business Model & Licensing

Open source: SD 1.5, SDXL, SD3.5 Large available with permissive licenses allowing commercial use (some restrictions). Commercial API: $0.02-0.08/image via Stability AI Platform. Enterprise licensing: Custom agreements for high-volume usage and white-label deployments. Community: Over 10M users, integrated into 500+ applications (Automatic1111, ComfyUI, RunDiffusion). Revenue model: API usage, enterprise contracts, membership plans. The company balances open-source community building with commercial viability, though competition from FLUX and other models has intensified.

Code Example

# Stable Diffusion via Stability AI API
import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.stability.ai/v1/generation/stable-diffusion-v3-5/text-to-image",
    headers={
        "Authorization": "Bearer sk-...",
        "Accept": "application/json"
    },
    json={
        "text_prompts": [{"text": "A serene mountain landscape at sunset"}],
        "cfg_scale": 7,
        "height": 1024,
        "width": 1024,
        "samples": 1,
        "steps": 50
    }
)

image_data = response.json()["artifacts"][0]["base64"]

# Local Stable Diffusion with diffusers
from diffusers import StableDiffusion3Pipeline
import torch

pipe = StableDiffusion3Pipeline.from_pretrained(
    "stabilityai/stable-diffusion-3.5-large",
    torch_dtype=torch.float16
).to("cuda")

image = pipe(
    "Photorealistic portrait of a person reading a book",
    num_inference_steps=50,
    guidance_scale=7.5
).images[0]

image.save("sd35_output.png")

Impact & Legacy

Stable Diffusion's open-source release democratized AI art, spawning entire industries: ControlNet for precise control, LoRA for custom styles, inpainting/outpainting tools, img2img workflows, and commercial services built on SD. Community contributions: 100K+ custom models on CivitAI, thousands of LoRAs and embeddings. Commercial impact: Powers Canva, Adobe Firefly (trained on SD), Clipdrop, and hundreds of startups. Academic impact: Most-cited generative model with 10K+ research papers. Challenges: Competition from Midjourney, FLUX, and DALL-E 3; leadership transition; sustainability of open-source business model.

Professional Integration Services by 21medien

21medien offers Stable Diffusion integration services including custom model deployment, fine-tuning with DreamBooth/LoRA, API integration, batch processing pipelines, and production infrastructure. Our team specializes in SD optimization, custom model training, ControlNet integration, and building scalable generation systems. Contact us for custom Stable Diffusion solutions.

Resources

Official website: https://stability.ai | API docs: https://platform.stability.ai/docs | Models: https://huggingface.co/stabilityai | SD3.5 blog: /en/blog/stable-diffusion-3-5