Runway is moving beyond building AI video models and into shaping what gets built on top of them. The AI video-generation startup has launched a ten million dollar venture fund to invest in early-stage companies building across AI, media, and world simulation. It is also rolling out a Builders program offering seed to Series C startups free API credits, a move that suggests Runway wants to create an ecosystem around what it calls video intelligence.
Runway has become one of the leading players in AI video generation, with its tools used across film, advertising, and marketing. But with the launch of its general world models last December, the company is now pushing beyond creative tooling into broader applications. It is looking to tap startups as a way to explore use cases it cannot pursue alone.
Runway’s thesis for the fund is divided into three areas. The first is technical teams that are pushing the frontier of AI and building new kinds of architecture. The second is builders creating the application layer on top of foundation models and bringing AI to new use cases. The third is companies experimenting with new forms of media creation, storytelling, and distribution.
For the past year and a half, Runway has quietly backed a handful of early-stage founders and companies. Those include LanceDB, which builds databases for AI applications, and Tamarind Bio, which uses AI to design new proteins for drug discovery. Some startups, like real-time audio-generation firm Cartesia, are working on products that complement its own.
Runway has raised close to eight hundred sixty million dollars to date from backers like Nvidia and Qatar Investment Authority, and is valued at around five point three billion dollars. It seeded the ten million dollar fund with existing investors and close partners, with plans to write checks of up to five hundred thousand dollars for pre-seed and seed-stage startups.
Runway is not the only AI startup that is turning around to invest in companies just starting out. OpenAI has its Startup Fund, and AI search startup Perplexity launched its own fifty million dollar venture fund last year for seed-stage startups. CoreWeave also launched CoreWeave Ventures in September to back AI companies.
That same philosophy is driving Runway’s new program for builders. Eligible early-stage startups can apply for the program to get five hundred thousand API credits and access to Characters, Runway’s recently released real-time video agent API that is powered by its new family of general world models. Characters lets users interact with generative AI agents in real time, giving them a face and a voice.
The Builders program is designed, in part, to see what startups build with the technology. The program is already live, with a founding cohort that includes Cartesia, MSCHF, Oasys Health, Spara, Subject, and Supersonik. They are using Characters to power things like AI customer support agents, interactive brand characters, personalized onboarding experiences, real-time sales assistants, and synthetic media tools.
Runway is excited about the potential for telemedicine and education. And since entertainment is its focus, it expects Characters to be used in gaming and new kinds of entertainment experiences. This is part of its push for general world models, a set of models that are interactive, real-time, and immersive.
Other startups like Inworld and Charisma are also building interactive AI characters for games and storytelling, while companies like StoReel are experimenting with AI-generated shows users can engage with directly. Some, like Character AI, are already popular for their AI characters you can talk to.
Runway believes that there is a new kind of internet that is going to be more personalized, more immersive, and in real time.