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Runway (company)

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Runway AI, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustryArtificial intelligence, machine learning, software development
Founded2018; 6 years ago (2018)
Headquarters
Manhattan, New York City
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Cristóbal Valenzuela (CEO)
  • Anastasis Germanidis (CTO)
  • Alejandro Matamala (CDO)
ProductsGen-1, Gen-2, Gen-3 Alpha
Number of employees
86
Websiterunwayml.com

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 commercial text-to-video and video generative AI models Gen-1, Gen-2[2][3] and Gen-3 Alpha.[1]

Runway's tools and AI models have been utilized in films such as Everything Everywhere All At Once,[4] in music videos for artists including A$AP Rocky,[5] Kanye West,[6] Brockhampton, and The Dandy Warhols,[7] and in editing television shows like The Late Show[8] and Top Gear.[9]

History

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The company was founded in 2018 by the Chileans Cristóbal Valenzuela,[10] Alejandro Matamala, and the Greek Anastasis Germanidis after they met at New York University Tisch School of the Arts ITP.[11] 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[12] in a Series A funding round.

In December 2021, the company raised US$35 million in a Series B funding round.[13]

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.[14][15]

On December 21, 2022 Runway raised US$50 million[16] in a Series C round. Followed by a $141 million Series C extension round in June 2023 at a $1.5 billion valuation[17][18] from Google, Nvidia, and Salesforce[19] to build foundational multimodal AI models for content generation to be used in films and video production.[20][21]

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[22][23][24] 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.[25]

Services and technologies

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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[26]

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

Stable Diffusion

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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.[27][28][29] Stable Diffusion is mostly used to create images conditioned on text descriptions.

Gen-1

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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.[30] Gen-1 is an example of Generative artificial intelligence for video creation.

Gen-2

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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.[31][32][33][34]

Gen-3 Alpha

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Gen-3 Alpha is the first of an upcoming series of models trained by Runway on a new infrastructure built for large-scale multimodal training. It is a major improvement in fidelity, consistency, and motion over Gen-2, and a step towards building General World Models.[2]

Training data for Gen-3 has been sourced from thousands of YouTube videos and potentially pirated films. A former Runway employee alleged to 404 Media that a company-wide effort was to compile videos into spreadsheets, which was then downloaded using youtube-dl through proxy servers to avoid being blocked by YouTube. In tests, 404 Media discovered that names of YouTubers would generate videos in their respective styles.[35]

AI Film Festival

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Runway hosts an annual AI Film Festival[36] in Los Angeles and New York City.[37][38]

References

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  1. ^ a b 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. ^ a b "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. ^ "How director and editor Evan Halleck uses Runway for films, music videos, and commercials". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  5. ^ "Distorting Reality with Dan Streit". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ The Dandy Warhols - "I'd Like To Help You With Your Problem (feat. Slash)" - Official Music Video, 14 February 2024, retrieved 2024-03-01
  8. ^ "How Runway took The Late Show edits from five hours to five minutes". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  9. ^ "How Drew Emery uses Runway to edit content for Top Gear America & Cooper's Bar". Runway. Retrieved 2024-03-01.
  10. ^ "TIME100 AI 2023: Cristóbal Valenzuela". Time. 2023-09-07. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  11. ^ Black, Julia. "'Not Everyone Is Trying to Build God': Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Tries to Dampen the Doomerism". The Information. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  12. ^ "RunwayML raises $8.5 million for its AI-powered media creation tools". VentureBeat. 2020-12-16. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  13. ^ "Runway raises $35M Series B | Runway Blog". Runway. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  14. ^ Cai, Kenrick. "The AI Founder Taking Credit For Stable Diffusion's Success Has A History Of Exaggeration". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  15. ^ "The original startup behind Stable Diffusion has launched a generative AI for video". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  16. ^ Cai, Kenrick. "Runway Raises $50 Million At $500 Million Valuation As Generative AI Craze Continues". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  17. ^ "AI Video Startup Runway Raises $141 Million From Google, Nvidia". Bloomberg.com. 2023-06-29. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  18. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (2023-06-29). "Runway, a startup building generative AI for content creators, raises $141M". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  19. ^ "Google Invests in AI Startup Runway to Wrest Cloud Business From AWS". The Information. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  20. ^ Black, Julia. "'Not Everyone Is Trying to Build God': Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Tries to Dampen the Doomerism". The Information. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  21. ^ "Featured interview: Runway AI CEO Chris Valenzuela - First Move with Julia Chatterley - Podcast on CNN Audio". CNN. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  22. ^ 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.
  23. ^ "Generative AI's Next Frontier Is Video". Bloomberg.com. 2023-03-20. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  24. ^ Vincent, James (2023-03-20). "Text-to-video AI inches closer as startup Runway announces new model". The Verge. Retrieved 2023-09-15.
  25. ^ "TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2023: Runway". Time. 2023-06-21. Retrieved 2023-09-20.
  26. ^ 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.
  27. ^ "Stable Diffusion developer Runway raises $50M to create AI multimedia tools". SiliconANGLE. 2022-12-06. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  28. ^ "Stability AI Is Losing Executives, Engineers and Its Edge". Bloomberg.com. 2023-08-08. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  29. ^ "The original startup behind Stable Diffusion has launched a generative AI for video". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  30. ^ "Gen-1 by Runway". Runway. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  31. ^ "Text to Video Generative AI Is Finally Here and It's Weird as Hell". Gizmodo. 2023-03-22. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  32. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (2023-06-09). "Runway's Gen-2 shows the limitations of today's text-to-video tech". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  33. ^ 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.
  34. ^ Vincent, James (2023-03-20). "Text-to-video AI inches closer as startup Runway announces new model". The Verge. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
  35. ^ Cole, Samantha (July 25, 2024). "AI Video Generator Runway Trained on Thousands of YouTube Videos Without Permission". 404 Media. Retrieved July 25, 2024.
  36. ^ "Runway AI Film Festival". Runway. Retrieved 2023-11-18.
  37. ^ Melendez, Steven. "A new film festival will only show movies made using AI".
  38. ^ Kokalitcheva, Kia. "1 big movie thing: an AI-generated film festival".
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