# Runway

Runway AI, Inc. is an American company headquartered in New York City that develops generative artificial intelligence models and tools for creating videos, images, and multimedia content, including the open-source Stable Diffusion model. Founded in 2018, it has raised over $500 million and partners with major studios and festivals.

Runway AI, Inc. (also known as Runway and RunwayML) is an American company headquartered in New York City that specializes in [generative artificial intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) research and technologies. The company is primarily focused on creating products for generating videos, images, and various multimedia content through developing commercial text-to-video and video generative AI models. Its tools and AI models have been utilized in films such as *Everything Everywhere All at Once* and in editing television shows like *The Late Show with Stephen Colbert*.

The company develops proprietary foundational model technology used in filmmaking, post-production, advertising, editing, and visual effects. Additionally, Runway offers an iOS app aimed at consumers, and its platform is designed to make advanced [machine learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning) techniques accessible to creative professionals without requiring deep technical expertise.

## Background and present

Runway was founded in 2018 by the Chileans Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala, and the Greek Anastasis Germanidis after they met at New York University Tisch School of the Arts ITP. The company is focused on generative AI for video, media, and art, building on research in [deep learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/deep-learning) and [neural networks](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/neural-network) to create tools that automate and enhance creative workflows.

The company raised US$2 million in seed funding in 2018 to develop a platform for deploying machine learning models within multimedia applications. In December 2020, Runway raised US$8.5 million in a Series A funding round, followed by a US$35 million Series B round in December 2021. On December 21, 2022, the company raised US$50 million in a Series C round. This was followed by a $141 million Series C extension round in June 2023 at a $1.5 billion valuation from Google, Nvidia, and Salesforce to build foundational multimodal AI models for content generation. On 3 April 2025, Runway raised $308 million in a funding round led by General Atlantic, valuing it at over $3 billion.

## Stable Diffusion

In August 2022, the company co-released an improved version of their latent diffusion model called Stable Diffusion, an open-source deep learning text-to-image model developed with the CompVis Group at LMU Munich and supported by compute from Stability AI. This release was a significant milestone in the broader adoption of [generative AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) for image creation, as it made high-quality text-to-image synthesis available to the public. The model's architecture relies on techniques such as [U-Net](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/u-net) and [cross-attention](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/cross-attention) mechanisms, which are also foundational to Runway's later video generation systems.

## Partnerships

In September 2024, Runway announced a partnership with Lionsgate Entertainment to create a custom AI video generation model trained on the studio's proprietary catalog of over 20,000 film and television titles. The model is designed exclusively for use by Lionsgate-affiliated filmmakers and cannot be accessed by other Runway users. In June 2025, AMC Networks partnered with Runway for AI content creation; AMC planned to use Runway's technology to generate marketing images and help pre-visualize shows before production begins. These collaborations reflect a broader trend of media companies integrating [artificial intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) into their production pipelines.

## Film festivals

Since 2023, Runway has hosted an annual AI Film Festival (AIFF) for films created using artificial intelligence tools. In its initial year it had 300 submissions and screenings in small New York City theaters. By 2025, the festival had over 6,000 submissions, indicating rapid growth in the community of AI-assisted filmmakers. Runway has also partnered with the Tribeca Film Festival since 2024 to showcase AI-generated films, providing a mainstream platform for works that rely on [generative AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) techniques.

## Recognition

In June 2023, Runway was selected as one of the 100 Most Influential Companies in the world by *Time* magazine. The recognition highlighted the company's role in advancing [generative AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) for creative industries and its impact on how films and other media are produced. Runway's tools have also been adopted in educational settings, with the company offering resources for educators to teach AI-based media creation.

## References

## External links

Official website 
Runway AI Film Festival
Runway for Educators

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/runway-ml
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-09T01:55:19.388683+00:00