AI video generation startup Runway has raised $315 million in a Series E round, nearly doubling its valuation to $5.3 billion.
The Series E funding round was led by General Atlantic with participation from NVIDIA, Adobe Ventures, AllianceBernstein, AMD Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Mirae Asset, Emphatic Capital, Felicis, and Premji Invest.
The new funding will be used to pre-train and deploy what the company calls the next generation of “world models” into new products and industries.
In general, a world model is an AI system designed to build an internal representation of the environment, allowing it to simulate and plan future scenarios. Many researchers consider these to be an important step beyond traditional large-scale language models.
The company unveiled its first global model in December and now believes the technology will be central to solving more complex problems, including use cases in medicine, climate research, energy systems, and robotics.
Funding after release of Gen 4.5
This funding follows the release of Runway’s latest video generation model, Gen 4.5. The system can create high-resolution videos from text prompts and includes features such as built-in audio, multi-shot long-form video creation, character consistency, and advanced editing tools.
The model has outperformed competing video generation systems from Google and OpenAI on several benchmarks, potentially sparking investor interest.
From media to a wide range of industries
Runway provides generative AI tools for creating images, videos, and simulations, enabling new creative workflows. The company first gained attention through its physics-aware AI video tools and became popular in media, entertainment, and advertising.
We recently partnered with Adobe to further strengthen our position in the creative industry.
Rivals pursuing world models include Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs and Google DeepMind, both of which have recently released their own models.
Runway is also expanding its computing power. The company recently signed an agreement with CoreWeave to increase access to high-performance infrastructure, a critical element in training large-scale AI systems.
Runway currently employs approximately 140 people and plans to expand its research, engineering and go-to-market teams with the new capital.
