Runway
by Runway (New York; runwayml.com now redirects to runway.com)
Commercial AI video and image platform and research lab, repositioned around “General World Models” in 2026.
Models and products (runway.com, 2026-10-02)
- Gen-4.5: the flagship video model; Runway’s own claim is “the world’s best video model” (motion quality, prompt adherence, fidelity). Released December 2025 (1 Dec per secondary sources). App generation is credit-metered per second (secondary, not on a retrieved Runway page).
- Aleph 2.0 + Edit Studio (released 2026-05-21, Runway news): upgraded in-context video editing model; edits across multi-shot sequences up to 30 s at 1080p, keyframe/image-level preview before generation; all paid plans on the desktop web app, also via API.
- Act-Two: performance-capture/character animation (listed on runway.com; details not re-verified).
- GWM-1: “General World Model built to interact with the real world” (Runway research page).
- GWM Worlds 2 (2026-09-03): define an environment and steer it by text; continuous 720p, 24 fps video with synchronised audio.
- Runway Characters (2026-07-19 per the research page): single image to a real-time conversational avatar with lip-sync.
- Third-party models inside Runway: the pricing page lists Seedance 2.0 Pro/Fast, Kling 3.0, Nano Banana Pro, Lyria 3, Seed Audio 1.0 next to Runway’s own Gen-4 Image / Gen-4 Image Turbo, so Runway is also an aggregator for the models in seedance, kling.
Plans (runway.com/pricing, 2026-10-02)
| Plan | Credits/month |
|---|---|
| Free | 125 one-time |
| Standard | 625 |
| Pro | 2,250 |
| Max | 9,500 |
API usage is credit-based; per-model API rates vary by model and resolution. Annual billing is cheaper. Current prices: see the vendor pricing page https://runway.com/pricing
Company
Raised a USD 315M Series E at about USD 5.3B valuation, announced 2026-02-10, led by General Atlantic (press and Wikipedia; Runway’s own post not retrieved). Funding is earmarked for world-model pre-training and robotics/gaming/medicine/climate use cases.
Fit
Creative video generation and editing, plus interactive world-model experiments. Competes with google-veo, kling, seedance, minimax-hailuo-video; OpenAI’s openai-sora is discontinued. Overview of the field: ai-video-generation-tools.
Open items
- Gen-4.5 exact release date and per-second pricing come from secondary sources only (runway.com/news/runway-gen-4-5 returned 404).
- Series E amount/valuation: press only.
Sources
- https://runway.com/research (accessed 2026-10-02)
- https://runway.com/pricing (accessed 2026-10-02)
- https://runway.com/news/introducing-aleph-2-and-edit-studio (accessed 2026-10-02)
- https://docs.dev.runwayml.com/guides/pricing/ (accessed 2026-10-02)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runway_(company) (accessed 2026-10-02)
- https://www.therundown.ai/tools/runway-gen-4-5 and https://theaiinsider.tech/2026/02/10/runway-closes-315m-series-e-to-advance-ai-world-models-and-video-generation-technology/ (secondary, accessed 2026-10-02)