Mohammad Emad Mostaque is the founder of Intelligente Internet co-founder and former chief executive officer of Stability AI, the company that funded the development of the open-source text-to-image model Stable Diffusion. He resigned from his leadership roles at the company in March 2024 to focus on decentralized artificial intelligence. ^{[1] [15]}

Early Life

Mostaque was born in Jordan on April 17, 1983, to a Bengali Muslim family. The family moved to Dhaka, Bangladesh, when he was one month old and later migrated to the United Kingdom when he was seven. His interest in artificial intelligence was significantly influenced by his personal life; after his son was diagnosed with autism, Mostaque began exploring how AI could be used to analyze existing research and identify patterns in complex data. In his twenties, he also developed an interest in creating online forums for Muslim communities and conceptualized an "Islamic AI" to provide religious guidance. ^{[1] [3]}

Education

Mostaque studied Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Oxford, earning Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. In a blog post addressing media reports that questioned his educational background, Mostaque clarified that he did not attend his graduation ceremony and therefore did not "technically have a BA or an MA" conferred in person. He stated that he later paid the required fee to have the degrees sent to him by post. ^{[4] [5] [1]}

Career

Mostaque began his career in finance, working for over a decade as a hedge fund manager where he focused on areas including crude oil trading and advising governments. In 2019, he founded Symmitree, a startup intended to lower technology costs for people in poverty, but the project failed within a year. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he co-led the Collective and Augmented Intelligence Against COVID-19 (CAIAC) initiative, which aimed to use data for governmental decision-making but did not launch, which served as a basis for later work with cryptocurrencies.^[1]

In late 2020, Mostaque co-founded Stability AI. The company gained widespread recognition in August 2022 after it funded and provided the computational resources for the public release of Stable Diffusion. The underlying model, initially called Latent Diffusion, was developed by researchers at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Heidelberg University. Under Mostaque's leadership, Stability AI achieved a valuation of $1 billion and its open-source models were downloaded over 100 million times. ^{[6] [3]}

On March 23, 2024, Mostaque resigned as CEO of Stability AI and from his seat on the company's board. He publicly stated his reason for leaving was to address the concentration of power in AI, asserting, "You can’t beat centralized AI with more centralized AI." His departure followed a period of internal turmoil, including an exodus of key executives and pressure from investors over the company's financial management and high burn rate, which was reported to be an estimated $8 million per month in late 2023. Following his exit from Stability AI, he founded Schelling AI, a venture focused on creating a distributed and open AI system using principles from Web3. He also launched Intelligent Internet (i.inc) and authored a book titled The Last Economy, which proposes a new economic theory for the age of AI. ^{[15] [7] [4] [8] [1]}

Intelligent Internet

After his departure from Stability AI, Mostaque founded Intelligent Internet (i.inc), where he serves as Founder & CEO. ^[16] The initiative aims to build a decentralized, open-source AI infrastructure to counteract the concentration of power in the hands of a few centralized AI providers. ^{[17] [18]} The project's whitepaper describes its purpose as providing a "Third Path" to avoid a "Great Race" toward monolithic AI and the "Gradual Disempowerment" of society, instead offering a "new social contract written in code." ^[19]

A central component of this vision is the concept of Universal AI (UAI), also referred to as Universal Basic AI (UBAI). The goal is to provide every individual with a baseline of open, verifiable intelligence by gifting each person a sovereign "II-Agent," an open-source AI assistant they own and control. This is intended to enhance human agency and democratize access to AI for improving education, healthcare, and overall quality of life. ^{[19] [18]}

The Intelligent Internet is designed with a three-tier architecture and a new economic model. It introduces a cryptocurrency called "Foundation Coin (FC)," described as a "Bitcoin for the Intelligence Age." Unlike Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work, FC is minted through a "Proof-of-Benefit" system, where new coins are created only as a reward for verifiable contributions to the public good, such as curating datasets or training open models. This system is designed to create a self-reinforcing loop where societal benefit mints value, which in turn funds more capability aligned with the common good. ^{[19] [20]}

Public Stances and Philosophy

Mostaque is a vocal advocate for an open-source approach to artificial intelligence, arguing that it fosters transparency, innovation, and democratization. He has stated that open models serve as "innovation enablers" that allow a global community to build specialized AI for diverse needs, thereby preventing a "geographical AI divide." He was a signatory of a March 2023 open letter calling for a six-month pause on the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, citing safety concerns. ^{[9] [1]}

He has made several bold predictions about the societal and economic impact of AI. Mostaque has argued that human-centric capitalism will not survive, as AI agents will become superior at allocating capital and executing business functions at a scale and speed humans cannot match. He has referred to generative AI as both a "$1 trillion investment opportunity" and the "biggest bubble of all time." In his book The Last Economy, he theorizes that the value of human cognitive labor will become negative and that the global economy will transition from a system based on scarcity to one governed by the "physics of information and entropy reduction." ^{[10] [11]}

"You can't beat 'centralized AI' with more 'centralized AI.' We should have more transparent & distributed governance in AI as it becomes more and more important. Its a hard problem, but I think we can fix it." ^[7]

"Capitalism as it is, is going to be great for AI. But how are we going to compete? How do you compete with entities that are strictly smarter than you... that learn perfectly from their mistakes... [and] never sleep." ^[11]

Controversies and Legal Issues

Throughout his tenure at Stability AI, Mostaque faced public scrutiny and internal challenges. A June 2023 report from Forbes, citing over 30 sources, alleged that he had a history of making exaggerated claims. The allegations included misrepresenting his educational background, the nature of a partnership with Amazon Web Services, and his role in the creation of Stable Diffusion. Mostaque publicly addressed some of these claims in a blog post, acknowledging "payment timing issues" with AWS and "some instances of delayed payments" to employees, which he stated were resolved. ^{[1] [5]}

In July 2023, Stability AI co-founder Cyrus Hodes filed a lawsuit against Mostaque, alleging he was defrauded into selling his 15% stake in the company for $100. According to the lawsuit, the stake was valued at approximately $150 million just five months later during a funding round. The company responded by stating Hodes was experiencing "seller's remorse." ^[12]

Mostaque's resignation in March 2024 was reportedly forced by investors. In October 2023, Lightspeed Venture Partners sent a letter to Stability AI's board expressing a loss of confidence in Mostaque's leadership and urging the company to seek a buyer. Another key investor, Coatue, had reportedly pushed for his resignation for months and initiated an internal investigation into his management. A Forbes investigation published after his departure attributed his exit to "poor business judgment" and "wild overspending" that eroded investor and employee confidence. ^{[13] [14]}

Interviews

Interviews

A Vision for an Intelligent Internet #01

On July 24, 2025, Emad Mostaque participated in an interview on the YouTube channel of Peter H. Diamandis, titled “Emad Mostaque: The Plan to Save Humanity From AI | EP #184.” In the conversation, Mostaque outlined his views on the role of artificial intelligence in shaping future economic and governance systems.

He stated that advances in AI are altering the relationship between productivity and labor, suggesting that labor will no longer be the primary driver of economic value. According to him, current structures of money, governance, and social organization are no longer adequate to address these changes and could lead to an uneven concentration of power if left unmodified.

Mostaque introduced the concept of the “Intelligent Internet,” described as an open-source and decentralized AI infrastructure. At the center of this proposal is the “Foundation Coin,” a cryptocurrency linked to computational power and social benefit instead of labor. He explained that such a system could direct AI resources to areas including healthcare, education, and governance, while aiming to align their use with collective needs.

The discussion also included his perspective on national AI “champions.” He suggested that individual countries could operate their own AI infrastructures to preserve data sovereignty while participating in a wider global network. He further referred to smaller, domain-specific AI models, noting that they can, in certain contexts, operate more efficiently than larger general-purpose models. One example cited was an 8-billion parameter medical model designed for healthcare applications.

Another element of the interview focused on the integration of ethical and cultural values into AI systems from the start of their development. Mostaque described this as a way to enable communities to influence the direction and application of their AI tools.

In conclusion, he argued that the creation of distributed AI infrastructures and the redefinition of economic and governance models are necessary steps to prevent the concentration of control in a limited number of entities. ^[21]

AI, Economics, and Risk Considerations #02

On September 28, 2025, Emad Mostaque participated in an interview on The Rollup as part of the series AI Supercycle. In this appearance, he presented his perspective on the potential effects of artificial intelligence across technical, economic, and ethical domains. He argued that the pace of AI development exceeds previous technological shifts and could bring major changes to existing global economic systems.

Mostaque highlighted the idea of user sovereignty in AI, noting that individuals should retain control over their own AI agents instead of depending exclusively on centralized platforms. This position is connected to his initiative Intelligent Internet, which is focused on open-source, privacy-oriented, and modular AI tools designed for application in areas such as healthcare, education, and government.

In the economic dimension, he suggested a framework that measures value beyond traditional GDP by integrating factors such as intelligence, networks, and diversity. Within this proposal, he introduced Foundation Coin, a cryptocurrency based on compute resources, intended to support AI projects aimed at social benefit, including fields like medical research and autism-related initiatives.

The interview also addressed risks linked to AI. Mostaque described what he referred to as a “50% doom scenario,” estimating that in the next two to three decades there is a substantial possibility of existential challenges, including firmware-level attacks or large-scale replacement of cognitive labor. He stressed that the use of transparent and verifiable data, along with the development of portable and user-owned AI agents, would be key measures to reduce such risks.

The discussion presented his overall view of AI as both a tool with potential for public benefit and as a source of systemic challenges, emphasizing the need for approaches that combine technological progress with accountability and safeguards. ^[22]