Runway is strategically expanding its focus, moving beyond the sole development of AI video models to actively cultivate the innovative applications built upon its foundational technology.
The prominent AI video generation startup has announced the launch of a new $10 million venture fund, earmarked for investments in early-stage companies innovating across the domains of AI, media, and world simulation, as confirmed by its founders to TechCrunch. Complementing this, Runway is introducing a Builders program, offering free API credits to seed to Series C startups. This initiative underscores Runway's ambition to foster a vibrant ecosystem centered around what it terms "video intelligence."
Having established itself as a leader in AI video generation, with its tools widely adopted in film, advertising, and marketing, Runway is now venturing into broader applications. This shift follows the December launch of its "general world models," signaling a move beyond mere creative tools. The company aims to collaborate with startups to explore diverse use cases that it cannot pursue independently.
“We think that through video, we’re going to get to video intelligence, and it’s going to open a wider set of use cases in different industries that we can’t double down on today, but that maybe we can support with our research,” Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, Runway’s co-founder and chief design officer, explained to TechCrunch.
Runway's investment thesis for the new fund is structured around three core areas.
For the past eighteen months, Runway has discreetly supported a selection of early-stage founders and enterprises, Ortiz revealed. Notable investments include LanceDB, a firm specializing in databases for AI applications, and Tamarind Bio, which leverages AI for novel protein design in drug discovery. Additionally, some portfolio companies, such as real-time audio generation firm Cartesia, are developing products that synergize directly with Runway's offerings.
“The next generation of AI models will be built on multimodal data – video, audio, images, text together,” Chang She, co-founder and CEO of LanceDB, stated to TechCrunch. “LanceDB is building the infrastructure layer that makes that possible, and Runway is one of the few investors who understands why that matters.”
To date, Runway has successfully secured nearly $860 million in funding from investors including Nvidia and Qatar Investment Authority, achieving a post-money valuation of approximately $5.3 billion. The new $10 million fund was seeded by existing investors and key partners, with plans to issue checks of up to $500,000 to pre-seed and seed-stage startups.
Runway is not alone among AI startups in extending investment opportunities to nascent companies. OpenAI pioneered this trend with its Startup Fund, while AI search firm Perplexity launched a $50 million venture fund for seed-stage startups last year. CoreWeave also joined this movement, establishing CoreWeave Ventures in September to back AI companies.
“Many companies like ours are investing heavily on the primitives that will unlock a new set of applications or new types of companies,” Ortiz commented. He added, “Companies like ours that are still fairly small with only 150 people can’t focus on everything. But we do see opportunities in partnering very early with new teams that can benefit from what we’re doing.”
This strategic philosophy also underpins Runway’s new Builders program. Eligible early-stage startups are invited to apply for the program, which grants them 500,000 API credits and access to Characters, Runway’s recently unveiled real-time video agent API. Characters is powered by Runway's innovative family of general world models.
Characters enables users to engage with generative AI agents in real time, bestowing them with a customizable face and voice, ranging from whimsical to photorealistic. A key objective of the Builders program is to observe and facilitate the innovative applications that startups will develop using this technology.
“Until [recently], we didn’t have the possibilities of talking to a real-time video agent, so we are really trying to see which teams see the potential and positive impacts of this technology,” Ortiz remarked.
The Builders program is currently active, featuring a founding cohort that includes Cartesia, MSCHF, Oasys Health, Spara, Subject, and Supersonik. These participants are leveraging Characters to power diverse functionalities such as AI customer support agents, interactive brand characters, personalized onboarding experiences, real-time sales assistants, and sophisticated synthetic media tools.
Ortiz expressed particular enthusiasm for the potential applications in telemedicine and education. Given Runway's strong foundation in entertainment, he also anticipates Characters will be widely adopted in gaming and to create novel entertainment experiences.
“This is part of our general world models, which is what we’re pushing for next: a set of models that are interactive, real-time, and immersive,” Ortiz elaborated. “When you start combining all of these pieces, you can imagine that you will be able to generate and simulate entire environments, and participate and have conversations with the characters in these worlds.”
Concurrently, other startups like Inworld and Charisma are also developing interactive AI characters for gaming and storytelling, while companies such as StoReel are exploring AI-generated shows designed for direct user engagement. Meanwhile, Character AI has already gained considerable popularity for its conversational AI characters.
“We do really believe that there’s a new kind of internet that’s going to be more personalized, more immersive, and in real-time,” Ortiz concluded.
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