Runway Raises $50 Million At $500 Million Valuation As Generative AI Craze Continues

Runway's cofounders (from left) Anastasis Germanidis, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz and Cristóbal Valenzuela are immigrants who met while studying as art students at New York University. Runway ML, one of the two startups behind the popular AI text-to-image model Stable Diffusion, has raised new funding at a $500 million valuation, Forbes has learned. Felicis is leading the new funding, the sources said, which comes on the heels of a boom in generative AI that has captured the public's attention in recent months thanks to releases that also include OpenAI's Dall-E and ChatGPT. Runway quickly emerged as one of the buzziest startups in the mix with its video editing software, for which the company has been releasing a bevy of generative AI features. For example, from a photo of a forest, a user can type a short text phrase into Runway's software and instantly conjure a lake or a castle among the trees.