Is AI video just a prequel? Runway's CEO thinks world models are next
AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool in AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool almost overnight, and Runway has a front-row seat to the shift. The New York-based company has raised close to $860 million at a $5.3 billion valuation, and its models are going toe-to-toe with the most well-funded labs in the world, including Google and OpenAI.
And the technology goes way beyond making videos: it's now pushing into general world models with applications in gaming, robotics, and maybe something closer to general intelligence.
On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, host Rebecca Bellan sits down with co-founder and CEO Cristobal Valenzuela to talk about where video generation goes from here, and why Runway's ambitions now reach well beyond Hollywood.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
Why Valenzuela thinks the real constraint on filmmaking has never been technology, and what changes when it is
How Runway thinks about world models differently than Google and other labs building in the space
What "nonlinear media" means, and why real-time video generation opens up use cases way beyond content creation
Why Valenzuela pushes back on the idea that AI companions are “inherently dystopian”
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:56 Can AI really replace Hollywood?
04:18 Why "AI slop" fears miss the point
08:23 Research lab, software company, or creative studio?
13:42 From video generation to world models, explained
17:36 Omni models and multimodal training
17:50 The three pillars: linear media, non-linear media, physical AI
19:31 Real-time video and the "Characters" product
22:33 Are AI companions inherently dystopian?
25:59 Physical AI and robotics
28:35 Where growth is coming from: enterprise and prosumer
29:31 Outro
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The Next 8 Months in AI Video Will Change Film Forever - The Story
Cristóbal Valenzuela co-founded Runway to rethink how movies are made, and now his technology is spreading across Hollywood. Cristóbal sits down with Oz to discuss how far AI media tools have come in just the past six years, and why the next leap forward could happen even faster than anyone expects. He also addresses many artists' AI fears, by saying that film has always evolved alongside technological breakthroughs and that AI is simply the next chapter in that long history. And finally, Cristóbal and Oz explore Runway's next frontier after Hollywood and why video models might be the key to training humanoid robots.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
From Blood Transfusions to Burritos, How Zipline is Automating Delivery | E2238
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Today’s show:
On today’s TWIST episode, Alex interviews two of the top startup co-founders: Keller Cliffton of Zipline and Anastasis Germanidis of Runway.
Zipline announced its $600 million raise at a $7.6 BILLION valuation. Kellers breaks down the origins, economics, and future of Zipline’s contrarian bet in drone delivery. What was science fiction a decade ago is now a regular part of life for many. In fact, Zipline operates more flights than United!
Zipline is set to leapfrog the car delivery apps AND self driving cars with the superior economics of drone delivery. It is much cheaper to transport your burrito in a lightweight drone than a 6,000 pound self driving car!
Then, Alex is joined by Anastasis Germanidis, the CTO and co-founder of Runway, to explain why the next frontier of generative AI is world models! Runway is looking to build a universal simulation, which will unlock massive gains in robotics, autonomy, and simulations. The world model would be able to simulate rare edge cases that could take years to find naturally!
Check out how this cutting edge AI startup’s NYU Tisch School of Art’s origins
Then, See Jason’s answer to the question: “When should founders pivot or give up?”
Timestamps:
(00:00) The Drone revolution is here!
(02:46) Inside Zipline’s factory to build 20K drones a year
(04:40) American dynamism Vs. Chinese manufacturing dominance
(09:00) How Zipline is growing 75% month on month
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(11:15) Zipline teleports food and goods to your house
(21:54) Crusoe Cloud: Crusoe is the AI factory company. Reliable infrastructure and expert support. Visit https://crusoe.ai/savings to reserve your capacity for the latest GPUs today.
(23:02) Is it affordable to use a drone to deliver a burrito?
(29:18) Zipline DOUBLES United’s flight numbers
(31:11) LinkedIn Jobs - post your job for free at http://linkedIn.com/twist then promote it to get access to LinkedIn Jobs new AI assistant.
(32:21) Anastasis break’s down Runway’s AI modeling
(35:24) Runway’s Gen 4.5 and the world model
(40:57) Why do robotics companies need a world model?
(43:04) Using AI to simulate robot laundry folding
(52:37) Runway’s origins at NYU’s art school
(55:46) Founder Q/A: When to pivot or give up on your startup
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The Engineering Behind the World’s Most Advanced Video AI
Is video AI a viable path toward AGI?
Runway ML founder Cristóbal Valenzuela joins Lukas Biewald just after Gen 4.5 reached the #1 position on the Video Arena Leaderboard, according to community voting on Artificial Analysis.
Lukas examines how a focused research team at Runway outpaced much larger organizations like Google and Meta in one of the most compute-intensive areas of machine learning.
Cristóbal breaks down the architecture behind Gen 4.5 and explains the role of “taste” in model development. He details the engineering improvements in motion and camera control that solve long-standing issues like the restrictive “tripod look,” and shares why video models are starting to function as simulation engines with applications beyond media generation.
Connect with us here:
Cristóbal Valenzuela: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cvalenzuelab
Runway: https://www.linkedin.com/company/runwayml/
Lukas Biewald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lbiewald/
Weights & Biases: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wandb/
Is AI Hollywood’s Newest Star? Runway AI’s Vision for the Future of Film
AI video generators are making storytelling more affordable — and one day, the tools may allow anyone with enough creativity to become a filmmaker. But the same technology can power convincing deepfakes that undermine our shared reality and destabilize our politics.
Cristobal Valenzuela, the co-founder and CEO of Runway AI, joins Kara to discuss how its tools are disrupting the advertising and film industries, and why Hollywood studios might not want to admit how much they are using them.
They also talk about how Runway is holding its own against (and warding off takeover advances from) much bigger tech players, and the AI video industry's responsibility in preventing deepfakes and political manipulation. Plus: Kara becomes a Top Gun pilot! Watch the video on the On With Kara Swisher YouTube page.
Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher.
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Hollywood’s hottest AI partner, with Runway’s Cristóbal Valenzuela
AI tools are disrupting all types of creative content, and Runway AI is a pioneer making major waves in Hollywood. It’s partnering with the likes of Disney and Netflix to revolutionize production. Runway’s co-founder & CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela joins Rapid Response to dissect the company’s breakneck growth, the risks and responsibilities of AI tool makers, and how AI is redefining both business expectations and our notion of creativity. Cristóbal also reveals why he rebuffed advances from Meta for a highly lucrative acquisition, and how AI video is just a stepping stone to an entirely new media format — one more expansive and transportive than we can realistically comprehend today.
Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Why Runway CEO Cris Valenzuela thinks AI filmmaking is the future
Today, I’m talking with Runway CEO and co-founder Cris Valenzuela. This one’s special: Cris and I were live at an event in New York City last month hosted by Alix Partners, so you’ll hear the audience from time to time.
Runway is a leading AI video generation platform, and it’s getting better all the time. That puts Cris and his company on the same collision course with creators, artists, and copyright law as every other part of the AI industry — and you’ll hear Cris and I really get into all that here.
Links:
AMC Networks inks deal with AI company Runway | Hollywood Reporter
We made a film with AI. You’ll be blown away — and freaked out | WSJ
Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry | Verge
Runway says its latest AI video model can generate consistent scenes, people | Verge
Runway releases an impressive new video-generating AI model | TechCrunch
Runway Trained on Thousands of YouTube Videos Without Permission | 404 Media
Runway partners with Lionsgate to train on its catalog of video | Verge
AI companies lose bid to dismiss parts of visual artists' copyright case | Reuters
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Credits:
Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright.
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Silicon Valley OG shares crazy stories from Zynga early days + 3 business ideas
Episode 678: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Siqi Chen ( https://x.com/blader ), the founder of Runway.com.
—
Show Notes:
(0:00) Early days at Zynga
(14:34) Business ideas
(52:18) Touchy-feely class
(1:07:24) Siqi’s favorite interview question
(1:12:48) Insane growth of ElevenLabs
—
Links:
• Limitless - https://www.limitless.ai/
• Rewind - https://www.rewind.ai/
• Runway - https://runway.com/
• Hoffman Institute - https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/
• Pump - https://pump.fun/board
• ElevenLabs - https://elevenlabs.io/
—
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• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com
• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.
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Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC
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• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That - https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
Runway's Video Revolution: Empowering Creators with General World Models, with CTO Anastasis Germanidis
Nathan and co-host Stephen Parker delve into the world of AI video generation with Anastasis Germanidis, Co-Founder and CTO of Runway. This episode of The Cognitive Revolution explores the cutting-edge technology behind Runway's Gen 3 models and their impact on the creative industry. From emergent properties in scaled-up models to the democratization of video creation, join us for an illuminating discussion on the future of AI-generated content and its potential to reshape entertainment and culture.
Check out Runway here: https://runwayml.com
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SPONSORS:
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Omneky: Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off https://www.omneky.com/
Oracle: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds; offers one consistent price, and nobody does data better than Oracle. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/cognitive
RECOMMENDED PODCAST:
This Won't Last - Eavesdrop on Keith Rabois, Kevin Ryan, Logan Bartlett, and Zach Weinberg's monthly backchannel ft their hottest takes on the future of tech, business, and venture capital.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2HwSNeVLL1MXy0RjFPyOSz
CHAPTERS:
(00:00:00) About the Show
(00:00:22) About the Episode
(00:03:05) Introduction and AI for Creative Work
(00:03:39) Video Generation as World Modeling
(00:05:52) Emergent Properties in Scaled Models
(00:08:44) Importance of Architecture vs Data
(00:10:57) Multimodal Models
(00:15:52) Sponsors: Notion | Weights & Biases RAG++
(00:18:37) Video Understanding and AGI
(00:25:03) AI Agents for Video Creation
(00:27:30) Runway's culture of shipping
(00:29:20) Balancing Research Publication and Strategy
(00:33:19) Sponsors: Omneky | Oracle
(00:34:40) Features Variety Release Cycle
(00:36:54) Power Users
(00:38:56) Interactive Video
(00:40:40) Scaling Challenges
(00:42:21) Future of Creativity
(00:45:24) Competing with Giants
(00:47:39) Model Divergence
(00:49:28) Disclosure vs. Strategy
(00:51:19) Runway ML's API
(00:54:23) Outro
SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.cognitiverevolution.ai
Twitter (Podcast): https://x.com/cogrev_podcast
Twitter (Nathan): https://x.com/labenz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanlabenz/
Ashley Edwards - Genie Paper (DeepMind/Runway)
Ashley Edwards, who was working at DeepMind when she co-authored the Genie paper and is now at Runway, covered several key aspects of the Genie AI system and its applications in video generation, robotics, and game creation.
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Genie's approach to learning interactive environments, balancing compression and fidelity.
The use of latent action models and VQE models for video processing and tokenization.
Challenges in maintaining action consistency across frames and integrating text-to-image models.
Evaluation metrics for AI-generated content, such as FID and PS&R diff metrics.
The discussion also explored broader implications and applications:
The potential impact of AI video generation on content creation jobs.
Applications of Genie in game generation and robotics.
The use of foundation models in robotics and the differences between internet video data and specialized robotics data.
Challenges in mapping AI-generated actions to real-world robotic actions.
Ashley Edwards: https://ashedwards.github.io/
TOC (*) are best bits
00:00:00 1. Intro to Genie & Brave Search API: Trade-offs & limitations *
00:02:26 2. Genie's Architecture: Latent action, VQE, video processing *
00:05:06 3. Genie's Constraints: Frame consistency & image model integration
00:07:26 4. Evaluation: FID, PS&R diff metrics & latent induction methods
00:09:44 5. AI Video Gen: Content creation impact, depth & parallax effects
00:11:39 6. Model Scaling: Training data impact & computational trade-offs
00:13:50 7. Game & Robotics Apps: Gamification & action mapping challenges *
00:16:16 8. Robotics Foundation Models: Action space & data considerations *
00:19:18 9. Mask-GPT & Video Frames: Real-time optimization, RL from videos
00:20:34 10. Research Challenges: AI value, efficiency vs. quality, safety
00:24:20 11. Future Dev: Efficiency improvements & fine-tuning strategies
Refs:
1. Genie (learning interactive environments from videos) / Ashley and DM collegues [00:01]
https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.15391
2. VQ-VAE (Vector Quantized Variational Autoencoder) / Aaron van den Oord, Oriol Vinyals, Koray Kavukcuoglu [02:43]
https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.00937
3. FID (Fréchet Inception Distance) metric / Martin Heusel et al. [07:37]
https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.08500
4. PS&R (Precision and Recall) metric / Mehdi S. M. Sajjadi et al. [08:02]
https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.00035
5. Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture / Alexey Dosovitskiy et al. [12:14]
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.11929
6. Genie (robotics foundation models) / Google DeepMind [17:34]
https://deepmind.google/research/publications/60474/
7. Chelsea Finn's lab work on robotics datasets / Chelsea Finn [17:38]
https://ai.stanford.edu/~cbfinn/
8. Imitation from observation in reinforcement learning / YuXuan Liu [20:58]
https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03374
9. Waymo's autonomous driving technology / Waymo [22:38]
https://waymo.com/
10. Gen3 model release by Runway / Runway [23:48]
https://runwayml.com/
11. Classifier-free guidance technique / Jonathan Ho and Tim Salimans [24:43]
https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.12598
Genie: Generative Interactive Environments with Ashley Edwards - #696
Today, we're joined by Ashley Edwards, a member of technical staff at Runway, to discuss Genie: Generative Interactive Environments, a system for creating ‘playable’ video environments for training deep reinforcement learning (RL) agents at scale in a completely unsupervised manner. We explore the motivations behind Genie, the challenges of data acquisition for RL, and Genie’s capability to learn world models from videos without explicit action data, enabling seamless interaction and frame prediction. Ashley walks us through Genie’s core components—the latent action model, video tokenizer, and dynamics model—and explains how these elements collaborate to predict future frames in video sequences. We discuss the model architecture, training strategies, benchmarks used, as well as the application of spatiotemporal transformers and the MaskGIT techniques used for efficient token prediction and representation. Finally, we touched on Genie’s practical implications, its comparison to other video generation models like “Sora,” and potential future directions in video generation and diffusion models.
The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/696.
Building an Intelligent Business OS, with Runway CEO Siqi Chen
Nathan interviews Siqi Chen, CEO of Runway, about revolutionizing business finance through AI. In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, we explore how Runway is creating an intelligent business operating system that generates financial scenarios and explains complex metrics. Siqi shares insights on AI's future impact on finance, business, and society at large.
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Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) talks to experts who understand the complicated but not unknowable systems we rely on. You might be surprised at how quickly Patrick and his guests can put you in the top 1% of understanding for stock trading, tech hiring, and more.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Mos4VE3figVXleHDqfXOH
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/id1753399812https://podcasts.apple.com/id1753399812
SPONSORS:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds; offers one consistent price, and nobody does data better than Oracle. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive of OCI at https://oracle.com/cognitive
The Brave search API can be used to assemble a data set to train your AI models and help with retrieval augmentation at the time of inference. All while remaining affordable with developer first pricing, integrating the Brave search API into your workflow translates to more ethical data sourcing and more human representative data sets. Try the Brave search API for free for up to 2000 queries per month at https://bit.ly/BraveTCR
Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off https://www.omneky.com/
Head to Squad to access global engineering without the headache and at a fraction of the cost: head to https://choosesquad.com/ and mention “Turpentine” to skip the waitlist.
CHAPTERS:
(00:00:00) About the Show
(00:02:45) Runway
(00:06:11) AI features
(00:12:10) Defining the syntax
(00:14:48) How AI has been expressed since GPT-3
(00:18:32) When did it become clear that the models were getting good enough?
(00:24:29) Sponsors: Oracle | Brave
(00:26:38) How the model is being asked to generate a scenario
(00:26:38) What will drive the most improvement?
(00:28:50) How Runway can help you make decisions
(00:37:47) Sponsors: Omneky | Squad
(00:39:34) Runway as a business operating system
(00:39:51) How does the product work?
(00:44:31) What does the future hold?
(00:47:34) The frontier model has passed the average person
(00:51:18) AI tools for operations
(00:55:21) How to get the best out of AI models
(01:00:39) How AI models can write as you
(01:02:43) AGI, work, and the future
(01:08:33) AI safety, regulation, and the future
(01:11:26) Closing thoughts
(01:12:20) Outro
Generating the future of art & entertainment
Runway is an applied AI research company shaping the next era of art, entertainment & human creativity. Chris sat down with Runway co-founder / CTO, Anastasis Germanidis, to discuss their rise and how it’s defining the future of the creative landscape with its text & image to video models. We hope you find Anastasis’s founder story as inspiring as Chris did.
Sponsors:
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Featuring:
Anastasis Germanidis – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
Runway | Website
Runway | Twitter
Runway | AI Film Festival (AIFF)
Runway | Gen-2
Runway | Gen48
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
#172 Cristóbal Valenzuela: Can AI Revolutionize How We Create Art?
Join host Craig Smith on episode #172 of Eye on AI as he sits down with Cris Valenzuela, co-founder and CEO of Runway, an applied AI research company shaping the next era of art, entertainment and human creativity
Cris shares insights into the origins of Runway, highlighting how the company supports creators across various domains, from filmmaking to music production, by leveraging the power of AI.
We dive deep into the fascinating world of generative models like stable diffusion, discussing their development, applications, and the future of creative expression through AI.Discover how Runway's AI tools are breaking new ground in image and video generation, transforming artistic workflows, and opening up unprecedented opportunities for creativity.
We'll also explore the broader implications of AI in art and media, discussing the balance between technological innovation and the preservation of artistic integrity.
Tune in and don't forget to rate us on Apple Podcast and Spotify if you enjoy the episode!
This episode is sponsored by Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that allows anyone to set up an online store and sell their products. Whether you're selling online, on social media, or in person, Shopify has you covered on every base. With Shopify you can sell physical and digital products. You can sell services, memberships, ticketed events, rentals and even classes and lessons.
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Stay Updated:
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(00:00) Preview and Introduction
(01:56) Cris Valenzuela: Background and Runway's Genesis
(05:48) Understanding Diffusion Models
(08:01) Discussion on Mid Journey and Other Models
(10:19) Open Source vs Proprietary Models
(13:07) Exploring Video Generation Technology
(17:52) Achieving Consistency in Generated Videos
(21:22) Compute Requirements for Training Models
(25:07) Scale and Parameters of Runway's Models
(29:49) Customizing Models for Specific Needs
(33:51) Applicability to AR and VR
(37:32) Runway's User Community and Impact
(40:21) Runway's Best Work
Siqi Chen on How To Go Viral, Secrets to Storytelling, and Forgetting Best Practices
Siqi Chen is the Co-Founder and CEO of Runway, the modern and intuitive way to model, plan, and align your business for everyone on your team. Or, in Siqi’s words, “revolutionizing the $80 trillion business industry”.
A few months ago, Runway’s new website went viral across the internet. Siqi takes us inside how that happened. He’s no stranger to going viral, having previously built multiple companies that went from zero to millions of users within weeks, including the fastest growing product ever before ChatGPT took the crown in late 2022.
— — — —
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:00) Sponsor: Attio
(02:59) How Siqi goes viral
(06:13) Why conversion doesn’t always matter
(11:23) How to make B2B software more fun
(14:31) Working on the Curiosity and Spirit rovers at NASA
(16:50) Re-designing at the entire codebase and product at his first startup job
(21:13) Earning the nickname “FB Millz” making a million dollars building Facebook games
(25:11) Selling to Zynga and building the fastest growing product before ChatGPT
(28:36) Building a game with 90% Day 1 retention
(30:09) Being played by Kim Kardashian, Jack Dorsey, and shut down by Tim Cook
(32:10) Almost getting fired building a growth team at Postmates
(35:04) Building Sandbox VR: “escape rooms in VR”
(40:35) Meeting Kanye
(44:38) Getting the idea for Runway when COVID hit
(47:32) Why spreadsheets run every business
(54:40) Disrupting the $80 trillion business industry
(57:55) Making formulas 50x easier than Excel
(01:02:32) Why Runway’s building a painkiller
(01:06:32) How to fundraise
(01:08:32) Why the first question from an investor is the reason they won’t invest
(01:11:28) How to tell a company’s story
(01:15:23) The three layers of a story
(01:17:28) The importance of positioning in storytelling
(01:18:56) Runway’s flexible remote work strategy
(01:21:34) Why their hiring strategy changed over time
(01:22:39) Siqi’s single interview question & the three traits he looks for when hiring
(01:26:10) Unlearning consumer to learn B2B
(01:30:26) Navigating the first three years of no customers
(01:31:45) What surprised Dylan Field the most about building Figma
— — — —
Referenced:
Runway’s website: https://runway.com/
Reform Collective Design Agency: https://www.reformcollective.com/
Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/
SandboxVR: https://sandboxvr.com/
Lulu Cheng’s Android Playbook: https://www.piratewires.com/p/anduril-comms-strategy-early-days
— — — —
Where to find Siqi:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blader
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siqic/
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Generative AI in Video and the Future of Storytelling (with Runway CEO Cristobal Valenzuela)
We sit down with RunwayML’s CEO Cristobal Valenzuela to discuss the incredible tools they’re bringing to film and video creators (including last year’s Best Picture “Everything Everywhere All at Once” from A24), and the history + current state of the “visual” branch of generative AI. We cover how they’ve gone to market with both creators and enterprises, the potential for much more radical future use cases, and the company’s recent $141m strategic raise from Google, Nvidia + Salesforce and the context of the current AI fundraising landscape. Tune in!
Links:
Runway
Follow Cris on Twitter
Sponsors:
Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
20VC: Why AI Models are not a Moat, Where Does the Value in AI Accrue; Startups or Incumbents, What the World Has Got Wrong About AI, Why AI Needs a New Story and Who is the Right People to Tell it with Cris Valenzuela, Co-Founder & CEO @ Runway
Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. To date, Cris has raised over $285M for the company from the likes of Lux Capital, Felicis, Coatue, Amplify, and Nvidia to name a few. Runway's customers include academy-nominated movies, TV shows, media companies, and creatives across industries.
In Today's Episode with Cris Valenzuela We Discuss:
1. From Childhood in Chile to Founding one of the Hottest AI Startups:
What was the founding moment for Cris with Runway?
His investors described Cris as an "outsider". Does Cris believe he is an outsider? What are the biggest pros and cons of being an outsider?
What does Cris believe he is running from? What is he running towards?
2. Models are not a Moat: Models 101:
What does Cris believe is more important; model size or data size?
Why does Cris believe that models are not a moat?
How does Cris think about the lifespan of models? Will any used today be used in a year?
Are hallucinations a feature or a bug? What are the nuances?
3. The World Has Got AI Wrong: We Need Different Stories:
Why does Cris believe the world has got AI wrong?
Why do we need different stories for what AI can do and will be? Who should tell them?
Why do groups like screenwriters riot and protest if the tool is empowering and not replacing?
4. Company Building 101: Hiring and Fundraising:
What are the biggest pieces of startup advice that are total BS?
What has been the single biggest lesson Cris has learned when it comes to fundraising?
Does Cris believe that VCs really add value?
What have been the single biggest hiring mistakes that Cris has made?
How has Cris structured their interview process to make it the best interview process in the world?
Building the future of VFX and video editing with Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela | E1724
Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela joins Jason to discuss their suite of generative AI video editing tools (3:03), Runway's AI Film Festival and the rapid evolution of filmmaking (22:21), Runway's ability to lower the barrier to entry for aspiring filmmakers (36:05), and more!
(0:00) Jason kicks off the show
(3:03) What is Runway?
(6:39) Runway's text-to-video demo
(11:08) Clumio - Start a free backup, or sign up for a demo at https://clumio.com/twist
(12:08) Latent Diffusion paper
(16:30) The Late Show With Stephen Colbert
(20:51) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST
(22:21) Runway's AI Film Festival
(29:08) The rapid evolution of filmmaking
(31:59) Favorite directors and films
(36:05) Lowering the barrier of entry to filmmaking
(41:20) Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub - Apply in 5 minutes for six figures in discounts at http://aka.ms/thisweekinstartups
(42:51) Driving costs of filmmaking to zero
(44:57) Training Runway's data set & Fan Fiction
(52:07) Runway's generative capabilities
(54:30) Safety concerns
(58:20) The challenges of operating Runway
FOLLOW Cristóbal: https://twitter.com/c_valenzuelab
FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1
FOUNDERS! Subscribe to the Founder University podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/founder-university/id1648407190
Runway Gen-2: Generative AI for Video Creation with Anastasis Germanidis - #622
Today we’re joined by Anastasis Germanidis, Co-Founder and CTO of RunwayML. Amongst all the product and model releases over the past few months, Runway threw its hat into the ring with Gen-1, a model that can take still images or video and transform them into completely stylized videos. They followed that up just a few weeks later with the release of Gen-2, a multimodal model that can produce a video from text prompts. We had the pleasure of chatting with Anastasis about both models, exploring the challenges of generating video, the importance of alignment in model deployment, the potential use of RLHF, the deployment of models as APIs, and much more!
The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/622.
What does AI-powered content creation look like? with Runway ML’s Cristobal Valenzuela
For a long time, AI-generated images and video felt like a fun toy. Cool, but not something that would bring value to professional content creators. But now we are at the exciting moment where machine learning tools have the power to unlock more creative ideas.
This week on the podcast, Sarah Guo and Elad Gil talk to Cristobal Valenzuela, a technologist, artist and software developer. He’s also the CEO and co-founder of Runway, a web-based tool that allows creatives to use machine learning to generate and edit video. You've probably already seen Runway's work in action on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and in the feature film Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Show Links:
Watch Cris Valenzuela’s 2018 thesis presentation at New York University’s ITP program.
Read how Runway is used on the Late Show and in Everything Everywhere All at Once on the Runway Blog.
Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com
Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @c_valenzuelab
Show Notes:
[1:50] - Cris’s background and how he doesn’t see barriers between art and machine learning
[6:46] - How Runway works as a tool
[8:36] - The origins and early iterations of Runway
[12:22] - Product sequencing and roadmapping in a fast growing space
[15:43] - Runway as an applied research company
[19:10] - Common pitfalls for founders to avoid
[22:35] - How Runway structures teams for effective collaboration
[24:22] - Learnings from how Runway built Greenscreen product
[28:01] - Building a long-term and sustainable business
[32:34] - Finding Product Market Fit
[36:34] - The influence of AI tools in art as an artistic movement
Cristóbal Valenzuela — The Next Generation of Content Creation and AI
Cristóbal Valenzuela is co-founder and CEO of Runway ML, a startup that's building the future of AI-powered content creation tools. Runway's research areas include diffusion systems for image generation.
Cris gives a demo of Runway's video editing platform. Then, he shares how his interest in combining technology with creativity led to Runway, and where he thinks the world of computation and content might be headed to next. Cris and Lukas also discuss Runway's tech stack and research.
Show notes (transcript and links): http://wandb.me/gd-cristobal-valenzuela
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⏳ Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:06 How Runway uses ML to improve video editing
6:04 A demo of Runway’s video editing capabilities
13:36 How Cris entered the machine learning space
18:55 Cris’ thoughts on the future of ML for creative use cases
28:46 Runway’s tech stack
32:38 Creativity, and keeping humans in the loop
36:15 The potential of audio generation and new mental models
40:01 Outro
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🎥 Runway's AI Film Festival is accepting submissions through January 23! 🎥
They are looking for art and artists that are at the forefront of AI filmmaking. Submissions should be between 1-10 minutes long, and a core component of the film should include generative content
📍 https://aiff.runwayml.com/
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📝 Links
📍 "High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models" (Rombach et al., 2022)", the research paper behind Stable Diffusion: https://research.runwayml.com/publications/high-resolution-image-synthesis-with-latent-diffusion-models
📍 Lexman Artificial, a 100% AI-generated podcast: https://twitter.com/lexman_ai
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Connect with Cris and Runway:
📍 Cris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/c_valenzuelab
📍 Runway on Twitter: https://twitter.com/runwayml
📍 Careers at Runway: https://runwayml.com/careers/
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💬 Host: Lukas Biewald
📹 Producers: Riley Fields, Angelica Pan
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