Report: AI Video Startup Runway Looking to Raise $450 Million
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered video startup Runway is reportedly looking to raise $450 million at a valuation of $4 billion.
The company is in talks with investors, Reuters reported Tuesday (July 2) based on a paywalled article by The Information that cited unnamed sources.
Runway did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
The company offers software that generates videos from text prompts or images, according to the Reuters report.
In June 2023, Runway raised a total of $141 million from Google, Nvidia and other investors and was valued at $1.5 billion, per the report.
When announcing that fundraising in a blog post, Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said that the firm would further scale its efforts to bring new multimodal AI systems to market.
“Runway has been pushing the boundaries of creativity with artificial intelligence for the last five years, and we are excited to continue innovating on a new era of creative tools for artists and creators everywhere,” Valenzuela said.
“In 2023, we brought to market Gen-1 and Gen-2, the first of their kind video generation models. Today, our entire suite of AI Magic Tools are being used by Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, helping tell new types of stories, and streamline workflows.”
On June 17, the company introduced Gen-3 Alpha, saying it is the first of an upcoming series of models trained by Runway on a new infrastructure built for large-scale multimodal training.
Gen-3 Alpha will power the company’s text-to-video, image-to-video and text-to-image tools, as well as other, upcoming tools, the company said in a press release.
“As part of the family of Gen-3 models, we have been collaborating and partnering with leading entertainment and media organizations to create custom versions of Gen-3,” Runway said in the release.
In another recent development in this space, AI startup Luma AI unveiled a tool called Dream Machine that can generate realistic video footage from a few lines of text.
“This not only levels the playing field, it decimates it,” HP Newquist, executive director of The Relayer Group, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in June. “For even those with a hint of interest, Dream Machine opens up an entire world of AI to them.”
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