Runway (company)

Runway AI, Inc. (also known as Runway and RunwayML) is an American company headquartered in New York City that specializes in generative artificial intelligence research and technologies.[1] The company is primarily focused on creating products and models for generating videos, images, and various multimedia content. It is most notable for developing the first commercial text-to-video generative AI models Gen-1 and Gen-2[2][3] and co-creating the research for the popular image generation AI system Stable Diffusion.[4][5]

Runway AI, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryArtificial intelligence, machine learning, software development
Founded2018 (2018)
Headquarters
Manhattan, New York City
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Cristóbal Valenzuela (CEO)
  • Anastasis Germanidis (CTO)
  • Alejandro Matamala (CDO)
ProductsStable Diffusion, Gen-1, Gen-2
Number of employees
78
Websiterunwayml.com

Runway's tools and AI models have been utilized in films such as Everything Everywhere All At Once,[6] in music videos for artists including A$AP Rocky,[7] Kanye West,[8] Brockhampton, and The Dandy Warhols,[9] and in editing television shows like The Late Show[10] and Top Gear.[11]

History

The company was founded in 2018 by the Chileans Cristóbal Valenzuela,[12] Alejandro Matamala, and the Greek Anastasis Germanidis after they met at New York University Tisch School of the Arts ITP.[13] The company raised US$2 million in 2018 to build a platform to deploy machine learning models at scale inside multimedia applications.

In December 2020, Runway raised US$8.5 million[14] in a Series A funding round.

On December, 2021, the company raised US$35 million in a Series B funding round.[15]

In August 2022, the company co-released an improved version of their Latent Diffusion model called Stable Diffusion together with the CompVis Group at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and a compute donation by Stability AI.[16][17]

On December 21, 2022 Runway raised U$50 million[18] in a Series C round. Followed by a $141 million Series C extension round in June 2023 at a $1.5 billion valuation[19][20] from Google, Nvidia, and Salesforce[21] to build foundational multimodal AI models for content generation to be used in films and video production.[22][23]

In February 2023 Runway released Gen-1 and Gen-2 the first commercial and publicly available foundational video-to-video and text-to-video generation model[24][25][26] accessible via a simple web interface.

In June 2023 Runway was selected as one of the 100 Most Influential Companies in the world by TIME magazine.[27]

Services and technologies

Runway is focused on generative AI for video, media, and art. The company focuses on developing proprietary foundational model technology that professionals in filmmaking, post-production, advertising, editing, and visual effects can utilize. Additionally, Runway offers an iOS app aimed at consumers[28]

The Runway product is accessible via a web platform and through an API as a managed service.

Gen-1

Gen-1 is a video-to-video generative AI system that synthesize new videos by applying the composition and style of an image or text prompt to the structure of a source video. The model was released in February 2023. The Gen-1 model was trained and developed by Runway based on the original paper Structure and Content-Guided Video Synthesis with Diffusion Models from Runway Research.[29] Gen-1 is an example of Generative artificial intelligence for video creation.

Gen-2

Gen-2 is a multimodal AI system that can generate novel videos with text, images or video clips. The model is a continuation of Gen-1 and includes a modality to generate video conditioned to text. Gen-2 is one of the first commercially available text-to-video models.[30][31][32][33]

Stable Diffusion

Stable Diffusion is an open-source deep learning, text-to-image model released in 2022 based on the original paper High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models published by Runway and the CompVis Group at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.[34][35][36] Stable Diffusion is mostly used to create images conditioned on text descriptions.

AI Film Festival

Runway hosts an annual AI Film Festival[37] in Los Angeles and New York City.[38][39]

References
  1. Metz, Cade (2023-04-04). "Instant Videos Could Represent the Next Leap in A.I. Technology". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  2. "Generative AI's Next Frontier Is Video". Bloomberg.com. 2023-03-20. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  3. Vincent, James (2023-03-20). "Text-to-video AI inches closer as startup Runway announces new model". The Verge. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  4. "Stability AI Is Losing Executives, Engineers and Its Edge". Bloomberg.com. 2023-08-08. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  5. "The original startup behind Stable Diffusion has launched a generative AI for video". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  6. "How director and editor Evan Halleck uses Runway for films, music videos, and commercials". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  7. "Distorting Reality with Dan Streit". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  8. Cowen, Trace William. "Kanye West Shares Unsettling Video for "Vultures (Havoc Version)" Ahead of Ty Dolla Sign Collab Album Release". Complex. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  9. The Dandy Warhols - “I’d Like To Help You With Your Problem (feat. Slash)” - Official Music Video, retrieved 2024-03-01
  10. "How Runway took The Late Show edits from five hours to five minutes". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  11. "How Drew Emery uses Runway to edit content for Top Gear America & Cooper's Bar". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  12. "TIME100 AI 2023: Cristóbal Valenzuela". Time. 2023-09-07. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  13. Black, Julia. "'Not Everyone Is Trying to Build God': Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Tries to Dampen the Doomerism". The Information. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  14. "RunwayML raises $8.5 million for its AI-powered media creation tools". VentureBeat. 2020-12-16. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  15. "Runway raises $35M Series B | Runway Blog". Runway. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  16. Cai, Kenrick. "The AI Founder Taking Credit For Stable Diffusion's Success Has A History Of Exaggeration". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  17. "The original startup behind Stable Diffusion has launched a generative AI for video". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  18. Cai, Kenrick. "Runway Raises $50 Million At $500 Million Valuation As Generative AI Craze Continues". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  19. "AI Video Startup Runway Raises $141 Million From Google, Nvidia". Bloomberg.com. 2023-06-29. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  20. Wiggers, Kyle (2023-06-29). "Runway, a startup building generative AI for content creators, raises $141M". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  21. "Google Invests in AI Startup Runway to Wrest Cloud Business From AWS". The Information. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  22. Black, Julia. "'Not Everyone Is Trying to Build God': Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Tries to Dampen the Doomerism". The Information. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  23. "Featured interview: Runway AI CEO Chris Valenzuela - First Move with Julia Chatterley - Podcast on CNN Audio". CNN. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  24. Metz, Cade (2023-04-04). "Instant Videos Could Represent the Next Leap in A.I. Technology". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  25. "Generative AI's Next Frontier Is Video". Bloomberg.com. 2023-03-20. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  26. Vincent, James (2023-03-20). "Text-to-video AI inches closer as startup Runway announces new model". The Verge. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  27. "TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2023: Runway". Time. 2023-06-21. Retrieved 2023-09-20.
  28. Vincent, James (2023-04-24). "Create generative AI video-to-video right from your phone with Runway's iOS app". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  29. "Gen-1 by Runway". Runway. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  30. "Text to Video Generative AI Is Finally Here and It's Weird as Hell". Gizmodo. 2023-03-22. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  31. Wiggers, Kyle (2023-06-09). "Runway's Gen-2 shows the limitations of today's text-to-video tech". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  32. Avram Piltch (2023-06-08). "Runway's Powerful Gen-2 Text-to-Video Tool Now Available to Everyone for Free". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  33. Vincent, James (2023-03-20). "Text-to-video AI inches closer as startup Runway announces new model". The Verge. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  34. "Stable Diffusion developer Runway raises $50M to create AI multimedia tools". SiliconANGLE. 2022-12-06. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  35. "Stability AI Is Losing Executives, Engineers and Its Edge". Bloomberg.com. 2023-08-08. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  36. "The original startup behind Stable Diffusion has launched a generative AI for video". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  37. "Runway AI Film Festival". Runway. Retrieved 2023-11-18.
  38. Melendez, Steven. "A new film festival will only show movies made using AI".
  39. Kokalitcheva, Kia. "1 big movie thing: an AI-generated film festival".
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