Runway
Runway is a New York-based AI research and product company founded in 2018. Its founders are Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz and Anastasis Germanidis. Valenzuela and Germanidis are co-CEOs. The company develops image, video and world models alongside creative software and an API platform.
Company & leadership
- Co-CEOs
- Cristóbal Valenzuela and Anastasis Germanidis. The co-CEO appointment was announced in February 2026.
- Legal entity
- Runway AI, Inc. Its issuer filing identifies a Delaware corporation incorporated in 2018.
- CTO
- Kamil Sindi, appointed in February 2026.
- Funding milestone
- $315 million Series E led by General Atlantic, announced on 10 February 2026.
Founders
- Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz and Anastasis Germanidis.
A company built around creative tools
Runway grew from work at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. NYU’s account of a 2026 founders’ discussion describes a business that began by making machine-learning tools easier for artists to use. The founding year is separate from the later launches of Gen video models and the API platform.
The company’s preserved May 2018 announcement describes the problem its founders were addressing: artists could see the possibilities of machine learning but often could not use the research tools. Early experiments included Uncanny Road, a drawing tool built with generative networks. This history explains why creative applications remained central as Runway began developing its own models.
Leadership and the 2026 funding round
In February 2026, Runway named Anastasis Germanidis co-CEO alongside Cristóbal Valenzuela. Its announcement said the change formalized an existing division of leadership. Kamil Sindi became CTO. Older profiles that list Germanidis as CTO therefore do not describe the current executive structure.
Runway announced a $315 million Series E led by General Atlantic that month. Participants included NVIDIA, Adobe Ventures, AMD Ventures and Fidelity. The financing announcement describes an investment round; it does not disclose a complete current ownership table.
Research beyond finished video clips
GWM-1 introduced three directions: simulated environments, conversational avatars and robotics. Runway described an autoregressive system built on Gen-4.5, where new frames depend on the preceding sequence. The avatar work became the basis of the Characters service.
Solaris, announced in August 2026, explores interfaces generated as the user interacts with them. Runway calls this an interface world model. Its research describes generated visual responses to input, rather than a conventional website assembled from HTML and application code. A research demonstration should not be mistaken for a supported general-purpose web application platform.
The September 2026 Praxis-1 announcement describes a generalist robot policy trained with video and work with early partners. Runway said open weights were planned. The announcement is not evidence that those weights were already available to download.
Runway’s own models and models it hosts
Runway Dev hosts models from several companies. Its catalog identifies each developer. The guides below cover Runway’s own models; an OpenAI, Google or Alibaba model does not become a Runway-developed model because it is called through this platform.
Availability also differs between the creative product and the API. On 30 July 2026, Runway Dev retired gen3a_turbo and gen4_aleph. That API notice does not establish the status of every tool in the creative product. Check the stated access route on each model guide.