Runway Becomes Investor With New $10M Startup Fund

The AI video company is putting money behind early-stage startups in AI, media, and world simulation, moving from funded startup to backer of the next wave.

Runway, the AI video company based in New York and last valued at $5.3 billion, has moved into venture investing with a new $10 million fund aimed at pre-seed and seed-stage startups. According to a report from Fund Momentum, the fund is run personally by Runway's three co-founders, Cristóbal Valenzuela, Anastasis Germanidis, and Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, and focuses on companies working in AI research, media production, and world-simulation technology. The fund was capitalized with support from Runway's own existing investors and close partners rather than raised as a standalone vehicle, and it can write checks of up to $500,000 into individual startups. Its early portfolio already includes Cartesia, LanceDB, and Tamarind Bio, giving a sense of the range Runway is targeting — from infrastructure and data tooling to biotech-adjacent AI work, alongside the media and world-model startups more directly tied to its own business. Alongside the fund, Runway is rolling out a Builders Program that gives qualifying startups free access to its API credits and early access to its models, with eligibility extending from seed-stage companies up through those at Series C. Combined with the investment arm, the program gives Runway a way to court founders early and keep them building on its infrastructure as they scale. The move mirrors a strategy already used by larger tech players such as Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, and Google's AI-focused funds, which invest in developer ecosystems that reinforce dependence on their core platforms. For Runway, positioning itself as both a foundation-model provider and an early backer of the startups building on top of its technology suggests an effort to lock in influence over how AI-driven media and world-simulation tools develop in the years ahead.