Runway
Leadership History
2 leaders · 2018 to present
Cristóbal Valenzuela and Anastasis Germanidis (co-CEOs) is the CEO of Runway, in the role since 2018.
| Name | Role | From | To | Years in role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cristóbal Valenzuela | Co-Founder & Co-CEO | 2018 | Present | 8 |
| Anastasis Germanidis | Co-Founder & Co-CEO | 2018 | Present | 8 |
Runway builds AI models that generate and edit video, images and audio, and increasingly simulate physical environments. Its products are now grouped as Runway Creative (generation and editing for creators and studios), Runway Dev (API access) and Runway Robotics (simulation for robot policy inference). The company says more than 60 million creators use its tools. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York.
Runway makes money in four ways. First, self-serve subscriptions: creators pay monthly or annual plans that include generation credits, with a free tier for trials. Second, enterprise plans priced per seat, sold to studios, agencies and brands that need team controls and security. Third, the developer API (Runway Dev), billed by usage, which lets other software products call Runway's video models. Fourth, direct licensing of frontier models to its largest customers, which Germanidis said in September 2026 is a growing share of business. A newer Runway Robotics platform offers photorealistic simulation for robot policy training.
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
2018 – Present
8 years (current)
Shift from a model marketplace to video generation; Lionsgate partnership (2024); repositioning as a world model company (2025-2026).
CEO since founding; led Runway through Gen-1, Gen-2, Gen-3 Alpha, Gen-4 and Gen-4.5 and fundraising from Series A to the $315M Series E at $5.3B.
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
2018 – Present
8 years (current)
World model research direction; robotics expansion; Paris research office.
Long-time research and technology lead; named co-CEO in 2026. Announced the $200M ARR milestone and the Kinetix team joining in September 2026.
These officers report to the chief executive and are not part of the CEO timeline above.
Video and world model training is extremely compute-intensive; Sacra estimates Runway's 2024 EBITDA loss at roughly $155 million on about $44 million of recognized revenue. Runway competes against far larger labs (OpenAI's Sora, Google DeepMind's Veo and Genie, Kuaishou's Kling) and world model startups such as World Labs, while copyright questions over training data remain unsettled across the industry.
Cristóbal "Cris" Valenzuela is the co-founder and CEO of Runway, having led the enterprise since its founding in 2018.
Born and raised in Santiago, Chile, Valenzuela earned a bachelor's degree in business economics and a master's in design from Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile, before moving to New York to earn a master's degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Runway was co-founded with Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz (Chief Design Officer, leading product aesthetics and user interaction design) and Anastasis Germanidis (Chief Technology Officer, spearheading deep learning research and systems engineering).
Valenzuela passionately rejects the narrative that AI will replace human artists. He champions generative AI as an empowering new medium—comparing it to the invention of the camera or the synthesizer—designed to democratize filmmaking and expand human storytelling potential.
In 2023, Valenzuela was named to the inaugural Time 100 AI list honoring the most influential leaders in artificial intelligence globally, and has been featured on Forbes 30 Under 30 and Bloomberg's Ones to Watch.
During the strikes, Valenzuela maintained active, respectful dialogue with entertainment industry guilds, emphasizing transparent tool design, artist copyright attribution, and advocating for regulatory frameworks that protect working creatives while fostering technical innovation.
Runway operates with an agile, high-density engineering culture split into three interconnected pillars: Applied Research (foundation model architecture), Product Engineering (cloud infrastructure and UI/UX), and Creative Production & Partnerships (Runway Studios and industry alliances).
Valenzuela personally spent months negotiating with Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns, demonstrating how private custom models could respect studio catalog IP while giving directors powerful new pre-visualization tools.
Valenzuela is a prominent keynote speaker at premier global technology and film gatherings, including the Milken Institute Global Conference, TED conferences, Tribeca Film Festival, and the Cannes Film Festival.
Valenzuela deliberately anchored Runway in New York City rather than Silicon Valley, choosing to remain immersed in the cultural, media, art, and advertising epicenter of Manhattan.
Valenzuela envisions Runway transforming into a full-scale AI-native Hollywood production studio and world simulation platform, enabling anyone with a compelling story to produce full-length, broadcast-quality feature films directly from their computer.
By keeping Runway's team lean, laser-focused exclusively on creative video media, and empowering researchers to ship models directly to live users in weeks rather than getting bogged down in corporate red tape.
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