Runway Secures Additional $141M in Funding
Runway, an applied AI research company leading in the generative AI market, has announced a $141 million extension to its Series C funding round. This round included participation from tech giants Google, NVIDIA, and Salesforce Ventures, as well as existing investors. The funding will be utilized to scale the company’s in-house research efforts, expand its team, and continue to develop and deploy state-of-the-art multi-modal AI systems.
AI-Powered Tools Transforming Industries
Runway has been at the forefront of AI-driven creativity, with products being used by media companies, TV shows, and even an Academy-nominated movie. The company’s AI-powered tools have also been adopted by Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, streamlining workflows and enabling new types of storytelling. Runway’s research team is consistently pushing the boundaries of deep learning to make content creation more accessible and empowering for artists and creatives. As Runway’s CEO and co-founder, Cristóbal Valenzuela, stated, “The next phase of storytelling will be highly democratized, and our ultimate goal is to create a more equitable, diverse, and creative world through our products and research outputs”.
Innovations in Content Generation
Since its last funding announcement, Runway has released Gen-1 and Gen-2, significant advances in generated content that allow users to generate video from an input video and either image or text prompts. Gen-2, in particular, is the first publicly available text-to-video model. The company also launched a mobile app, hosted the first-ever AI Film Festivals, and created Runway Studios, further expanding access to AI tools for users.
Industry Recognition and Future Growth
Runway’s role in shaping the future of content creation has been acknowledged by industry leaders. Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, commended Runway for their work with NVIDIA accelerated computing in the cloud, pushing the boundaries of creativity and storytelling for millions of artists globally. With this latest round of funding, Runway will continue to innovate and grow, offering opportunities across research, engineering, and product roles as they continue to build the future of creativity.