PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jonas Müller

Also known as Jonas Julius Müller

Jonas Müller is a researcher in image-generation models and a founding member of Black Forest Labs. After studying at Heidelberg University from 2015 to 2022, he worked at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München from 2022 to 2023 and at Stability AI from 2023 to 2024. At Stability AI he coauthored the SDXL paper in 2023 and the Stable Diffusion 3 paper in 2024, which was named a Best Paper at ICML 2024. Since 2024, he is a founding member of Black Forest Labs, which he co-founded with Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Sumith Kulal and Tim Dockhorn, and in 2025 he coauthored the FLUX.1 Kontext report.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2015–2022

    Studies at Heidelberg University

    Between 2015 and 2022, he studies at Heidelberg University, as an undergraduate from 2015 to 2019 and in a Master of Science program in scientific computing from 2020 to 2022.

  2. 2022–2023

    Semi-parametric image synthesis

    From 2022 to 2023, he is an academic researcher at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In April 2022, he and Andreas Blattmann, Robin Rombach, Kaan Oktay and Björn Ommer post "Semi-Parametric Neural Image Synthesis", a NeurIPS 2022 paper that pairs small diffusion or autoregressive models with a separate image database and a retrieval strategy.

  3. 2023–2024

    Researcher at Stability AI

    Stability AI employs him as a scientific researcher from 2023 to 2024. In July 2023, he is among the eight authors of SDXL, a text-to-image latent diffusion model with a UNet backbone three times larger than in earlier Stable Diffusion versions.

  4. March 2024

    The Stable Diffusion 3 paper

    In March 2024, he is among the authors of "Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis", the research behind Stable Diffusion 3. It presents a transformer-based text-to-image architecture that uses separate weights for the two modalities and enables a bidirectional flow of information between image and text tokens.

  5. 2024

    An ICML Best Paper

    At ICML 2024, the rectified flow transformer paper, with him among its authors, is listed as a Best Paper.

  6. June 2025

    The FLUX.1 Kontext report

    In June 2025, he is among the authors of the FLUX.1 Kontext report, which presents a generative flow matching model that unifies image generation and editing.

  7. Since 2024

    Co-founding Black Forest Labs

    Since 2024, he is a founding member of Black Forest Labs, which he co-founds in 2024 with Robin Rombach, Andreas Blattmann, Sumith Kulal and Tim Dockhorn. In April 2025, he and Frederic Boesel build text-to-image AI technology at the startup, and in September 2026 he contributes to the Cyber Valley Start-up Voices session.

Career

  1. Since 2024Black Forest LabsFounding member
  2. 2023–2024Stability AIScientific researcher
  3. 2022–2023LMU MunichAcademic researcher

Education

  1. 2022Heidelberg UniversityMaster of Science in scientific computing
  2. From 2015Heidelberg UniversityUndergraduate

From the biography.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Black Forest Labs. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. Universities (31%) and startups and other companies (25%) employ the largest shares of 2020–2026 entrantsIncludes Black Forest Labs. Among 819 people whose first recorded role started in 2020–2026 and who have a known current organization, 60% work in commercial sectors (25% at startups and other companies, 23% at frontier labs and 13% at big tech, with 9 in two), and 31% work at universities, compared with 66% for earlier entrants.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes LMU Munich. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes LMU Munich. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Jonas Müller yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Jonas Müller (Black Forest Labs) — Lacuna lacuna.tiptreesystems.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. [2204.11824] Semi-Parametric Neural Image Synthesis arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. [2307.01952] SDXL: Improving Latent Diffusion Models for High-Resolution Image Synthesis arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. [2403.03206] Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. ICML 2024 Awards icml.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. [2506.15742] FLUX.1 Kontext: Flow Matching for In-Context Image Generation and Editing in Latent Space arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Earlybird earlybird.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Meet the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe class of 2025 forbes.com.au. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. Cyber Valley Day 2026 | Cyber Valley cyber-valley.net. Checked 22 October 2026.