At a valuation of $ 1.5 Billion, Runway is touted to be the subsequent section of generative AI video innovation. Dubbed “Gen-2”, Runway’s newest launch is an AI text-to-video mannequin that creates movies utilizing pre-existing photos and textual content prompts. Gen-2 is the follow-up to its predecessor Gen-1 which was launched in February. One of many world leaders in synthetic intelligence computing and software program, Nvidia (who additionally noticed rising inventory market costs) contributed to the $141 Million sum subsequent to Google and Salesforce.

Based by Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala and Anastasis Germanidis in 2018, Runway was created to democratise machine studying whereas encouraging its use within the inventive trade, notably with filmmakers, photographers and cinematographers. An accompanying cellular app was launched earlier this yr, giving Runway customers entry to its generative AI software program.

A buyer base comprising Fortune 500 and International 2000 corporations alongside legions of particular person creators exhibits the importance of AI as a device for content material creation for companies. The founders of Runway purpose to reimagine content material creation and construct a “new sort of inventive, generative suite”. The success and development of ChatGPT and AI sees each massive know-how corporations and enterprise capital companies prepared to speculate billions into burgeoning startups which are working with groundbreaking know-how.

Founder Valenzuela has said that, “Content material creation immediately may be very costly and time-consuming. We need to assist carry these price and time elements as near zero as potential, particularly as corporations’ content material wants are solely growing.” What’s the way forward for Runway? Nicely, the corporate lately launched the AI Movie Competition, an occasion that, as experiences say is “devoted to showcasing movies produced in entire or partially by AI”. With this new money injection, solely time will inform if Runway and different AI startups will be capable to placate skeptics.  

Skeptics apart, in response to Reuters experiences, Inflection (one other comparable generative AI utility) raised $1.3 billion from Microsoft at a valuation of $4 billion whereas Typeface additionally raised a hefty funding of $100 million (in Sequence B of funding), with the latter having solely launched in February this yr. 2023 appears to be the yr of technological innovation with generative AI persevering with to form how we produce tales and concepts, bringing creativeness into the tangible.

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