Exclusive: Runway launches $10M fund, Builders program to support early-stage AI startups

The runway is moving beyond construction Artificial intelligence video models And in shaping what is built above them.

The AI ​​video generation startup has launched a $10 million venture fund to invest in early-stage companies based on global AI, media and simulation, the company’s founders told TechCrunch. It’s also rolling out a Builders program that offers free API credits to Series C startups, a move that suggests Runway wants to create an ecosystem around what it calls “video intelligence.”

Runway has become one of the leaders in AI video creation, with its tools being used in films, advertising, and marketing. But with Launching its “General Global Models” Last December, the company has now moved beyond creative tools to broader applications. It is looking to leverage startups as a way to explore use cases that it cannot pursue on its own.

“We believe that with video, we will get to the intelligence of video, and it will open up a broader set of use cases in different industries that we can’t duplicate today, but maybe we can support that with our research,” Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, co-founder and chief design officer at Runway, told TechCrunch.

The fund’s Runway thesis is divided into three groups:

1. Technical teams that push the boundaries of AI and build new types of architecture.
2. Creators build the application layer on top of basic models and bring AI to new use cases.
3. Companies are experimenting with new forms of media creation, storytelling and distribution.

Over the past year and a half, Runway has quietly backed a handful of founders and early-stage companies, Ortiz said. Include those Lance D.Bwhich builds databases for artificial intelligence applications, and Bio tamarindwhich uses artificial intelligence to design new proteins for drug discovery. Some startups, such as a real-time audio generation company Cartesianworks on products that complement its products.

“The next generation of AI models will be built on multimedia data — video, audio, images and text together,” Zhang Shi, co-founder and CEO of LanceDB, told TechCrunch in a statement. “LanceDB is building the infrastructure layer that makes this possible, and Runway is one of the few investors who understand why this is important.”

Runway has raised approximately $860 million to date from backers such as Nvidia and the Qatar Investment Authority, and is valued at approximately $860 million. $5.3 billion after funds. It has seeded a $10 million fund with existing investors and close partners, with plans to write checks of up to $500,000 to pre-seed and seed stage startups.

Runway isn’t the only AI startup looking to invest in companies just starting out on their journeys. OpenAI is the OG with its own startup fund, and AI research startup Perplexity has also launched its own fund An investment fund worth $50 million Last year for seed-stage startups. CoreWeave was also launched CoreWeave projects In September to support artificial intelligence companies.

“Many companies like ours are investing heavily in primitives that will open up a new set of applications or new types of businesses,” Ortiz said. “Companies like ours, which are still fairly small and only employ 150 people, can’t focus on everything. But we see opportunities in partnering very early on with new teams that can benefit from what we do.”

Building with characters

The same philosophy drives Runway’s new program for builders. Qualified early-stage startups can get started application The program will receive 500,000 API credits and access CharactersRunway’s recently released real-time video proxy API powered by its new family of generic global models.

Personas allow users to interact with creative AI agents in real-time, giving them a face and voice that can range from cartoonish to photorealistic. The Builders program is designed in part to see what startups are building using this technology.

“Even (recently), we haven’t had the capabilities of talking to a video agent in real time, so we’re really trying to figure out which teams see the potential, positive impacts of this technology,” Ortiz said.

The program is already in place, with a corporate portfolio that includes Cartesia, MSCHF, Oasys Health, Spara, Subject and Supersnik. They use personas to power things like AI customer support agents, interactive brand personas, personalized onboarding experiences, real-time sales assistants, and synthetic media tools.

Ortiz said he is excited about the potential of telemedicine and education. Since entertainment is Runway’s bread and butter, Ortiz said he expects the characters to be used in games and new types of entertainment experiences.

“This is part of our global public models, which is what we’re going for next: a set of interactive, real-time, immersive models,” Ortiz said. “When you start bringing all these pieces together, you can imagine that you’ll be able to create and simulate entire environments, and engage and have conversations with characters in these worlds.”

Other startups like In the world and Charisma Companies are also building interactive AI characters for gaming and storytelling, and businesses are loving it Storell They experiment with AI-generated displays that users can interact with directly. Some, like Artificial intelligence characterare already famous for their AI characters that you can talk to.

“We really believe there is a new kind of Internet that will be more personalized, more immersive, and more real-time,” Ortiz said.