NASA’s Webb telescope spotted an active supermassive black hole that existed 570 million years after the Big Bang. That’s really early.
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Seems NASA postulates that there is or was such a thing as mid-sized black holes that are created by the collision of massive stars in clusters…then these merge to form a SMB.
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The collapse of star clusters is one hypothesis for the creation of intermediate mass black holes, yes, but those aren’t predicated on any actual stars forming. Stars just form as a matter of course.
Stellar mass black holes generally require core-collapse supernovae - which require massive stars - in order to compress the core enough to trigger black hole formation. That isn’t true for these larger types of black holes.