Emad Mostaque was born in Jordan on 17 April 1983 and raised in Dhaka. He moved to the UK at seven and studied mathematics and computer science at Oxford. He has said he was diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD.
In 2019 he started Symmitree, a company meant to lower technology costs for people in poverty. It failed, and he and his co-founder later gave different explanations. He then co-founded Stability AI with Cyrus Hodes and became CEO.
In August 2022 Stability AI released Stable Diffusion, an open text to image model built on research from LMU Munich and Heidelberg. That year it raised US$101 million at a US$1 billion valuation, led by Coatue and Lightspeed.
In 2023 Forbes published a report questioning claims he had made, Getty and artists filed lawsuits, and Hodes sued over the sale of his stake. Lightspeed wrote to the board in October 2023. Mostaque resigned on 23 March 2024. In November 2025 the UK High Court ruled for Stability AI in the Getty case.