Arcade, the world’s first AI-native platform for physical product creation and commerce, announced the appointment of Varun Jampani as Chief AI Officer. Jampani, widely recognized for his role in co-creating Stable Diffusion 3.5, DreamBooth, and other generative vision technologies, will lead the company’s AI research and development efforts to bridge digital creativity with real-world manufacturing.
Arcade enables users to design, purchase, and sell custom physical products using natural language and generative AI, connecting individual ideas with a global network of artisans and makers. The platform seeks to democratize creation, allowing consumers to transform concepts into manufacturable items, while unifying shopping, self-expression, and making through AI.
“Arcade represents an exciting application of generative AI technology, allowing consumers to buy physical products as easily as generating an image,” said Jampani. “I’m incredibly excited to join Arcade and Mariam to help lead this revolution and unleash human creativity at a scale the world has never seen.”
Jampani’s contributions to AI are widely regarded as transformative. As VP of Research at Stability AI, he led the development of foundational models for image, video, and 3D generation, including Stable Diffusion 3.5, DreamBooth, Stable Virtual Camera, Stable Video Diffusion 4D, and Stable Fast 3D. DreamBooth, in particular, enables AI systems to internalize new concepts from minimal examples and render them in infinite styles and contexts. Prior to Stability AI, Jampani held research roles at Google and NVIDIA, advancing computer vision capabilities for AR/VR, robotics, graphics, simulation, and content creation.
“Varun’s work transformed generative vision from a research breakthrough into something hundreds of millions of people actively use every day,” said Mariam Naficy, founder and CEO of Arcade. “Now, he will help Arcade build the infrastructure for a fundamentally new kind of commerce — one where the power to create and sell is truly universal.”
Investors are optimistic about Jampani’s appointment. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and Arcade investor, said: “Varun’s decision to join Arcade as Chief AI Officer speaks to both the technical ambition and world-changing potential of what Arcade is building. This is the team to define the future of commerce.”
At Arcade, Jampani will oversee development of AI capabilities that translate natural language prompts into physical products across multiple categories, including home goods, fashion, and lifestyle. His expertise across image, video, and 3D modalities is expected to accelerate Arcade’s mission to create a seamless interface between imagination and reality, where consumers can visualize, price, and purchase exactly what they envision.
