Runway
Company History
Runway History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2018 in New York City, New York, United States
When was Runway founded?
Runway was founded in 2018 in New York City, New York, United States by Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz and Anastasis Germanidis, making it 8 years old.
- Founded
- 2018
- Founding place
- New York City, New York, United States
- Founders
- Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz and Anastasis Germanidis
- Headquarters today
- New York City, New York, United States
- Milestones documented
- 7 (2018–2026)
- Current CEO
- Cristóbal Valenzuela and Anastasis Germanidis (co-CEOs)
- Acquisitions
- 3
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2018 | Runway founded |
| 2021 | Latent diffusion paper |
| 2023 | Gen-1 and Gen-2 launch; $1.5B valuation |
| 2024 | Gen-3 Alpha and Lionsgate deal |
| 2025 | Series D, Gen-4, Gen-4.5 and GWM-1 |
| 2026 | $315M Series E at $5.3B |
| 2026 | $200M ARR and Kinetix team joins |
- Where was Runway founded?
- Runway was founded in New York City, New York, United States in 2018.
- Who founded Runway?
- Runway was founded by Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz and Anastasis Germanidis.
- When did Runway start?
- Runway was founded in 2018.
- How old is Runway?
- Runway is 8 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
Valenzuela, Matamala-Ortiz and Germanidis met as students at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. In 2018 they launched Runway as an app store of machine learning models for artists. Usage showed that filmmakers mostly used it to automate tedious work like rotoscoping and inpainting, and that insight pushed the company toward video. Its tools were used by the VFX team on Everything Everywhere All at Once and by editors at CBS's The Late Show.
Founders
Cristóbal Valenzuela
Cristóbal Valenzuela co-founded Runway in 2018 and has led it as CEO since; he has shared the role as co-CEO with Anastasis Germanidis since early 2026. He has described world models as the most transformative technology of the era and was named to TIME's 100 most influential people in AI. Valenzuela was born in Chile in 1989. He co-founded Runway in New York City in 2018 with Anastasis Germanidis and Alejandro Matamala.
Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz
Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz co-founded Runway in 2018 alongside Cristóbal Valenzuela and Anastasis Germanidis. Coming from an art and design background, he was absolutely critical in designing Runway's incredibly sleek, browser-based interface, perfectly abstracting the incredibly complex underlying AI models so that video editors could use them without knowing how to code. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Anastasis Germanidis
Anastasis Germanidis co-founded Runway in 2018 and led its research and engineering as CTO. In 2026 he became co-CEO alongside Valenzuela, a change Runway said formalized his role driving research. He has publicly announced the company's 2026 ARR milestones and its push into robotics. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Runway founded
Founded in New York by three NYU ITP alumni as a no-code toolkit for running machine learning models.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLatent diffusion paper
Runway researchers co-authored the latent diffusion paper with LMU Munich, the basis of Stable Diffusion.
Source: arxiv.orgGen-1 and Gen-2 launch; $1.5B valuation
Released Gen-1 (video-to-video) and Gen-2 (text-to-video) and raised a $141M Series C extension from investors including Google and NVIDIA.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgGen-3 Alpha and Lionsgate deal
Launched Gen-3 Alpha and Act-One, and agreed to train a custom model on Lionsgate's library.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSeries D, Gen-4, Gen-4.5 and GWM-1
Raised a $308M Series D at just over $3B in April, then released Gen-4, Gen-4.5 and its first general world model, GWM-1.
Source: sacra.com$315M Series E at $5.3B
General Atlantic led the February round; Germanidis became co-CEO.
Source: techcrunch.com$200M ARR and Kinetix team joins
ARR doubled from about $100M in April to $200M in September; the Paris-based Kinetix team joined to work on robotics.
Source: pymnts.comMajor Acquisitions
Kinetix (3D motion & world model lab)
2026Paris-based lab working on 3D human motion and physically grounded video; the team and IP joined Runway to advance interactive world models and spatial AI.
Runway Studios (Production Arm)
2022Established dedicated entertainment production arm and creative financing incubator to fund, produce, and distribute AI-assisted cinema.
AI Film Festival (AIFF Platform)
2023Founded and acquired marquee cultural exhibition rights for the premier global AI Film Festival celebrating computational filmmaking.
Keep researching Runway
Runway Company History FAQ
When and where was Runway founded?
Runway (legally Runway AI, Inc.) was founded in 2018 in New York City, New York, by Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz, and Anastasis Germanidis.
How did the founders meet and conceive Runway?
The founders met while studying at the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University's (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts, where they recognized that cutting-edge deep learning vision models were inaccessible to creative artists and filmmakers without computer science coding skills.
What was Runway's crucial role in the creation of Stable Diffusion?
In 2021-2022, Runway co-created the breakthrough research paper on "High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models" alongside researchers at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (CompVis), which became the foundational open-source architecture for Stable Diffusion.
When did Runway launch Gen-1 and what was its technical breakthrough?
In February 2023, Runway released Gen-1, the first commercial video-to-video diffusion model capable of applying stylistic visual effects, 3D renderings, and artistic transformations to existing video footage guided by text prompts.
When was Gen-2 launched and what capability did it introduce?
In March 2023, Runway unveiled Gen-2, a major leap forward that introduced commercially viable text-to-video and image-to-video generation, allowing creators to synthesize complete 4-second video clips from raw text descriptions without reference video.
How was Runway used in the Oscar-winning film "Everything Everywhere All at Once"?
The visual effects (VFX) team behind "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (which won seven Academy Awards in 2023, including Best Picture) utilized Runway's AI rotoscoping and background removal tools to complete complex VFX sequences in days rather than months with a lean five-person team.
When was Gen-3 Alpha released and what did it achieve?
In June 2024, Runway launched Gen-3 Alpha, a next-generation multimodal video foundation model trained on massive compute infrastructure, delivering photorealistic fidelity, accurate human anatomy, complex camera motions, and precise temporal consistency.
What was the landmark Lionsgate partnership announced in September 2024?
In September 2024, Runway announced a historic first-of-its-kind studio partnership with Lionsgate, agreeing to train a custom generative AI model exclusively on Lionsgate's 20,000-title film and television library to assist Lionsgate directors and producers in pre-production and VFX.
What is the Runway AI Film Festival (AIFF)?
Established in 2023, Runway created the annual AI Film Festival, celebrating groundbreaking cinema made with generative artificial intelligence, screening winning films in theaters in New York and Los Angeles with cash grants for independent filmmakers.
What is Runway's valuation trajectory across its funding rounds?
Runway raised an $8.5 million Series A in 2020, a $35 million Series B in 2021, and reached a $1.5 billion valuation in June 2023 following a $141 million Series C extension backed by Google, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, and Lux Capital.
What interactive creative features did Runway pioneer (Motion Brush, Camera Control)?
Runway introduced "Motion Brush" (allowing creators to paint over specific image areas to direct precise directional motion) and advanced "Camera Control" (directing cinematic pan, tilt, zoom, and roll), giving filmmakers granular cinematic control over generative video.
What is Runway Studios?
Runway Studios is Runway's entertainment and production arm, serving as an incubator for creative projects, financing AI-native films, and partnering with Hollywood production houses to integrate generative tools into professional cinema workflows.
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