Wikipedia

Runway (company)

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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 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'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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