Christoph Schuhmann, Richard Vencu, Romain Beaumont, Robert Kaczmarczyk & Jenia Jitsev

LAION originates from a vision to democratize machine learning research by promoting open collaboration and providing universal access to datasets, code, and models. Christoph Schumann, Dr. Jenia Jitsev, Richard Vencu, Dr. Romain Beaumont, Dr. Mehdi Cherti, Jan Ebert, and Dr. Robert Kaczmarczyk, researchers and citizen scientists with various backgrounds, are the founding members of LAION. The community is an embodiment of the shared commitment to make AI research more open and democratic. This vision has been realized through significant collaborations with diverse entities, including Juelich Supercomputing Center, Huggingface, the University of Washington, Stability AI, and others. Moreover, LAION's use of the world's most powerful supercomputers such as JUWELS Booster, Summit, and Frontier, attests to their drive to harness AI for societal advancement. As of today, LAION is an open dynamic community of more than 25,000 machine learning enthusiasts. 

LAION was Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2023 in the Science & Innovation Management category.