Runway ML Revolutionizes Video Generation with $236M in Funding

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1:03Runway is a very famous company that essentially allows you to generate AI videos it's one of the big AI video generation platforms and you know there's a couple contenders there's Synthesia who allows you to essentially create like talking head videos these are this is a lot more creative in a sense that it's literally like mid journey or like Dolly 2 where you can put text in and it can generate images or that essentially actually generating videos. So let's talk a little bit about their history. Runway was actually started back in 2017 when the CEO Cristobal Venezuela was an NYU student essentially dreaming up new ways AIs was going to augment human creativity.

1:47So while image generation models were kind of taking off, he saw untapped potential in video and he really was seeking to kind of create an AI-powered video editing tool. He actually joined forces with two other NYU students as well as researcher Chris Cundy to found Runway in 2018. Their timing proved to be very impeccable. Generative AI was on the cusp of some major advances that I think would soon capture the public's imagination. So initially bootstrapped, Runway gained a lot of traction with its first product which was a real time background removal tool for video and then more video editing tools quickly followed so this really allowed users to stabilize footage interpolate frames and erase objects with single clicks this was all very revolutionary in video and video editing and harnessed ai to do so so according to venezuela these tools compressed editing time from hours to minutes and runway gained viral popularity among YouTube creators and indie filmmakers seeking time-saving solutions.

2:51But Runway had a lot bigger ambitions than just a number of AI tools for video. At its core, the startup was an AI research lab, and Venezuela knew the real magic would come from training its own models. So in 2020, Runway released its first generative model, SDK, which allowed users to build custom text to image and image to image models. So the same year it published a landmark paper unveiling the AI techniques behind stable diffusion. Stable diffusion would soon, you know, really take the world by storm after Anthropic spun it out as an open source project in 2022. That's when we really saw stable diffusion take off.

3:32So we have to give a big tip of the hat to Anthropic for that. But Runway's research laid the groundwork years prior on this method of stable diffusion and it really was illuminating the promise of diffusion models so with generative ai really exploding runway raced to you know you could say stake its claim but essentially it released the gaugan image generation model in 2021 and then it debuted kinetica for video animations so its tools were used by major studios to create visual effects for hits like everything everywhere all at once. In 2022, that was when Runway really kind of, I would say, hit the mainstream as a mainstream breakout company.

4:13The company raised over$100 million in funding, and it rolled out Gen 1 for video generation and essentially formed an entertainment division called Runway Studios. Adoption after that was very, very fast. Today, Runway has over 300, or sorry, it has over 30 AI-powered creative tools, and its technology has been used by CBS, Vox Media, and Pentagram. So with recent launches of their mobile app and Gen2 system, Runway, I think, is really bringing text to video creation to the masses. So as far as that goes, Runway essentially is just scratching the surface, according to their CEO, on what is actually possible.

4:58And as AI research progresses he actually envisions tools that are exponentially faster easier and more powerful so the goal remains unchanged since runway's founding which is really to uh is really just empowering human imagination through technology and just a few years in runway has already left a massive mark in generative ai so this kind of brings us to their next launch which was back in april Runway launched an app to bring users video to video generative AI. And this is actually currently available on iOS. You can go find it. It's called Runway ML only on Apple. It's, you know, ranked around 176 in photo and video.

5:39So it's not the biggest app. It is free and it has made a bit of a splash. Reviews on it are mixed. I think it has around a 3.8 star review. I've seen some things where people said, you know, the idea of generating video using another video is very different from any other app I've used. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about what AI could do, but, you know, especially after seeing some experiments online, but this just feels different. I know it's early, so looking forward to all the new updates. That was one reviewer. But some reviews are not as kind. Someone said, there are many ways to do text-to-video or image-to-video or video-to-video these days.

6:16I'll suffer from some coherency issues, but I'll offer their own strengths and weaknesses anyways um so this is interesting i believe the technology is just going to get better but this was a very interesting and big step that runway really kind of took um and kind of came into the mainstream since that launched and since the the founding of the company they have raised a whopping 236 million dollars to date they most recently did a series c and i think runway is really poised as the front runner of image or as video generating platforms and they recently launched a new feature where you could essentially do you could do image to video generation so I looked at a number of people that were you know doing some demos on this it's really impressive stuff someone essentially had an image generated on mid journey they uploaded it and then And it's like a person and it's, you know, the video is then that person moving around.

7:14And you essentially turn images into video, which is really impressive, especially considering this is the very start. You can also, if you're interested, look up a video called Create Cinematic AI Videos with Runway Gen 2. That is essentially going over a really interesting video someone has generated of like all these astronauts getting into a space station and all this really cinematic stuff that looks really impressive. and I think what they've done is just went to mid-journey generated a bunch of images that are all along what they want then turn them into video use those as kind of like really cinematic shots and put together an impressive video so I think there's um I think we really are just scratching the surface with what runway can do and I do believe that this is going to be a big player not only have they raised a lot of money but they are some you know there's some pioneers in the field that are really pushing this uh this video to the next level this video aspect of AI so I think we're going to see a lot more innovation out of runway this is a company that i don't see going anywhere anytime soon and overall a very very interesting company that will definitely continue to follow into the future