Runway started by helping filmmakers. Now it wants to beat Google at AI.

AI video procreation startup Runway doesn’t person the emblematic Silicon Valley pedigree. No Stanford founders, nary ex-Google founders, nary nine-figure effect circular that bought them clip to disregard revenue. Its 3 founders — 2 from Chile, 1 from Greece —  met astatine NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and built the institution successful New York.

Runway besides could be, depending connected who you ask, 1 of the astir consequential AI companies today. Not due to the fact that of what it has built, but due to the fact that of what it is trying to physique next. 

For the past respective years, the AI manufacture has mostly operated connected the premise that quality lives successful language. Large connection models similar OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude bespeak that bet. 

Runway, alongside different competitors, is making a antithetic one. Its founders judge the adjacent signifier of AI quality won’t beryllium built from text, but from video and satellite models that larn however the satellite works, not conscionable however humans picture it. That favoritism sounds academic. Its implications are not. 

Runway co-Founder and co-CEO Anastasis Germanidis said grooming models straight connected observational information from the satellite is the adjacent frontier of AI. The companies that get determination first, helium argues, won’t beryllium the ones who perfected language.

“We’re fundamentally bound by our ain knowing of reality,” Germanidis told TechCrunch from Runway’s homey sunlight-filled office adjacent Union Square.  

“Language models are trained connected the full internet, connected connection boards and societal media, connected textbooks — distilling the existing quality knowledge,” Germanidis continued. “But to get beyond that, we request to leverage little biased data.”

Founded successful 2018, Runway built its estimation connected video-generation models — including its latest Gen-4.5 — and AI tools that fto radical crook substance prompts into editable, cinematic content.

Today, Runway’s exertion powers accumulation workflows for filmmakers and advertisement agencies, and the institution has signed deals with large media players similar Lionsgate and AMC Networks. Its tools person adjacent been utilized successful films specified arsenic “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” 

Runway is present valued astatine $5.3 billion and, according to 1 of its founders, added $40 cardinal successful yearly recurring revenue successful the 2nd 4th of 2026.

If Runway’s stake that video procreation is the way to satellite models pays off, the effect volition beryllium felt from Hollywood to cause discovery. If it doesn’t, Runway risks being outpaced by competitors with acold deeper pockets — Google main among them.

Taking the leap

Within the past six months, the startup has enactment its program into enactment and expanded beyond video generation, launching its first satellite exemplary successful December, with plans to motorboat different this year. (World models are AI systems that simulate environments good capable to foretell however they’ll behave.) 

Runway isn’t unsocial successful its pursuit of turning physics-aware video models to satellite models, with near-term usage cases successful interactive entertainment, gaming, and robotics training. Startups Luma and World Labs are connected a similar trajectory, and Google has pointed its Genie satellite model successful the aforesaid direction.

Everyone is aft immoderate mentation of the aforesaid thing: AI that solves humanity’s hardest problems. That’s acold from Runway’s archetypal product, but it’s the effect of some emergent capabilities successful the exertion and founders who were predisposed to travel wherever it led.

For his part, Germanidis sees satellite models arsenic technological infrastructure. The much sensory information and observations you bid a azygous exemplary on, the person you get to a moving integer duplicate of the beingness — 1 you tin tally experiments connected faster than immoderate laboratory could. Much of the technological process is conscionable waiting connected results, helium points out. If you could compress that waiting, you could compress advancement itself. 

“If we tin physique a amended idiosyncratic than quality scientists, we tin accelerate advancement successful however we recognize the beingness and however we lick problems,” Germanidis said.

The moonshot

Runway streetwear merch astatine the company's AI Summit successful March 2026. Image Credits:Runway

Germanidis fell successful emotion with programming arsenic an 11-year-old successful Athens and came to the U.S. astatine 18 to survey neuroscience and film. He turned backmost to machine science, moving astatine respective Silicon Valley tech firms earlier deciding he’d had capable of the culture. Co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela, calved and raised successful Santiago, studied economics arsenic an undergraduate earlier moving successful movie and past software. Another Santiago native, Chief Innovation Officer Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz studied advertizing and ran a plan firm. 

The 3 met successful 2016 portion attending NYU’s ITP (Interactive Communications Program), a postgraduate programme that Valenzuela described arsenic an “art schoolhouse for engineers.” 

The co-founders had each aspired to beryllium filmmakers astatine definite points successful their lives, according to Matamala-Ortiz. So Runway started with a elemental mission: Can we usage AI to marque everyone a filmmaker? 

After releasing their archetypal video procreation exemplary successful February 2023 — which is staggeringly unimpressive compared to what Runway is putting retired contiguous — that ngo evolved into: Could we marque everyone a great filmmaker, according to Matamala-Ortiz. 

It required increasing the squad to what it is today. The institution has 155 workers dispersed crossed offices successful New York, London, San Francisco, Seattle, Tel Aviv, and astir recently, Tokyo. "But passim this process, we learned that these models tin recognize however the satellite works, and if you standard them, they tin beryllium utile for galore different antithetic things,” helium added.

Things similar robotics, cause discovery, and clime modeling — the kinds of problems that person stumped researchers for decades. Last year, Runway launched a robotics unit which Germanidis says has already resulted successful real-world investigating and deployments.

Germanidis, like others, sees the tract heading toward training a azygous exemplary connected galore antithetic modalities — text, video, voice, and different sensors — and thinks the compounding effect is the point. 

His ain moonshot extremity for Runway’s technology, fixed capable clip and resources, is biologic satellite models and anti-aging research.

Whether Runway tin transportation its video dominance into satellite models is acold from settled, and the contention isn’t waiting around. Runway was among the archetypal to AI video generation, but satellite models are a antithetic contention with deep-pocketed and well-respected competitors. Google, erstwhile Meta main idiosyncratic Yann LeCun, AI’s ‘godmother’ Fei-Fei Li, and a increasing tract of startups are each chasing the aforesaid goal. 

Kian Katanforoosh, CEO of AI skills benchmarking institution Workera and a lecturer astatine Stanford, pointed retired that nary 1 has yet proven the leap betwixt video quality and generalized reasoning via satellite models, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. He said that if Runway wants to crook its satellite exemplary stake into reality, it volition request to proceed gathering resources — compute main among them.

Runway has deals with CoreWeave and Nvidia, but wouldn’t corroborate whether it has dedicated clump entree — the benignant of guaranteed, large-scale compute that grooming frontier models requires. 

“How are you going to physique a foundational exemplary without a cluster?” Katanforoosh asked. “I don’t deliberation anybody tin bash that.”

Runway has raised $860 cardinal to date, including a $315 cardinal round successful February from strategical partners similar AMD Ventures and Nvidia. That’s astir successful enactment with its astir contiguous competitors, Luma AI and World Labs, which person raised $900 cardinal and $1.29 billion, respectively, according to PitchBook. 

But Runway is besides going up against incumbents similar OpenAI, which has raised astir $175 cardinal per CEO Sam Altman, and tech behemoth Google, whose genitor institution Alphabet is worthy $4.86 trillion. Google is Runway’s biggest threat. The company’s Veo exemplary competes straight with Runway’s video procreation business, portion its Genie satellite exemplary targets the aforesaid longer-term territory Runway is racing towards. 

Katanforoosh nodded astatine OpenAI, which shuttered its video level Sora successful March aft burning astir $1 cardinal per day successful compute costs with hardly $2.1 cardinal successful gross according to immoderate estimates. His point: resources unsocial don’t warrant survival. They don’t warrant it for Runway either.

Katanforoosh isn’t penning Runway off. He pointed to AI audio startup ElevenLabs, which has outperformed OpenAI and Google connected their ain benchmarks, contempt lacking the resources and pedigree of either. Runway, helium argues, could travel a akin playbook. 

The examination isn’t mislaid connected Runway’s founders. Valenzuela says the startup’s deficiency of Bay Area “standardization” gives them an edge. Not lone bash they person diverseness of thought, helium contends, but without Silicon Valley ties, they had to beryllium scrappier, lacking the warfare thorax galore of their peers person entree to that would person insulated them from the request to make gross early.

And according to Michelle Kwon, Runway’s main operating officer, the institution isn’t successful a unreserved to rise much funds, adjacent arsenic compute demands summation with scale.  

“Their inheritance has led them to beryllium early, to beryllium close much often than not, and to physique a civilization that moves incredibly quickly,” aboriginal capitalist Michael Dempsey, managing spouse astatine Compound, told TechCrunch. 

For Valenzuela, that civilization starts with however helium sees the satellite successful the archetypal place. He spends immoderate escaped clip helium has — not much, arsenic a co-CEO and caller begetter — speechmaking books, including the Chilean writer Nicanor Parra, whom helium describes arsenic the antithesis of Pablo Neruda: little formal, little academic, holding a presumption that poesy belongs to the radical alternatively than to rules. 

“Rules are conscionable rules they invented,” Valenzuela said. “That’s a driving unit of however we bash things astatine Runway. They accidental Silicon Valley is present and that’s wherever the startups are. Why? Those are conscionable made up rules. Scrub them each and commencement again.”