Generative AI start-up Runway has secured $100m in funding from a top cloud provider, which is understood to be Google. It has also signed a $75m cloud deal with the search giant over three years beginning in August. Runway, based in New York, offers image and video transformation technology using text, and its tools helped make the Oscar‑winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once. The new valuation, from a series D round, is $1.5bn, up from the $500m of its series C phase six months ago.
The deal between Runway and Google underscores cloud providers’ increasing interest in AI as growth in computing slows, and makes Runway the latest AI model builder to attract investment from such players. In 2020, Microsoft invested $1bn in OpenAI through cash and credits for Microsoft’s cloud business Azure, it was reported last year.
Runway is a US-based start-up that offers technology that transforms images and videos with text. It was founded in 2018, and its tools were used in making the Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Google is an Alphabet-owned company, and is one of the world’s largest technology companies. It was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California. The company’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. In addition to its search engine, Google offers a range of services, including Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was formed in 2015, with Google being its principal subsidiary.
