AI video generation startup Runway has raised $315 million in a Series E round, nearly doubling its valuation to $5.3 billion, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
The new funding will enable Runway to “pre-train and deploy the next generation of global models into new products and industries,” according to the company’s blog post announcing the funding. World models are AI systems that build internal representations of the environment so that future events can be planned, and many top minds believe that world models are essential to moving beyond the limitations of large-scale language models.
Runway, best known for its physics-aware AI video generation models, released its first global model in December and now believes the technology will be central to tackling major challenges across fields such as medicine, climate, energy, and robotics. While the company has historically built a strong customer base in media, entertainment and advertising, including a recent partnership with Adobe, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that Runway is seeing increased adoption in gaming and robotics.
The runway changes come amid increasing competition among labs pursuing world models. Competitors include Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs and Google DeepMind, both of which recently released models.
This funding follows the release of Runway’s latest video generation model, Gen 4.5. Gen 4.5 enables users to generate high-resolution video from text prompts and introduces native audio, long-length, multi-shot generation capabilities, character consistency, and advanced editing tools.
This model gained Runway great credibility within the AI industry by outperforming both Google and OpenAI’s video generation services on several benchmarks. This milestone likely takes into account investor interest.
Beyond model development, Runway is also expanding its infrastructure. The company recently signed a deal with CoreWeave to expand its computing capacity, which may have helped reassure investors of Runway’s ability to operate in compute-intensive areas.
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Looking to the future, Runway plans to use the new funding to rapidly expand its team of approximately 140 people across research, engineering and market development, according to a company spokesperson.
The round was led by General Atlantic with participation from Nvidia, Fidelity Management & Research, AllianceBernstein, Adobe Ventures, Mirae Asset, Emphatic Capital, Felicis, Premji, and AMD Ventures.
