Runway raises $141 million Series C extension at a $1.5 billion valuation

Runway raised $141 million in what it described as an extension to its Series C round, with participation from Google, Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures alongside existing investors. TechCrunch and other outlets reported the extension valued the video-generation start-up at roughly $1.5 billion, up sharply from the terms of the original Series C it had closed the previous December. The extension took Runway’s total funding to $237 million.

Runway had not yet released Gen-2, the model that would become its first widely used commercial video generator, when the round closed; that followed the next year. Co-founder and chief executive Cristóbal Valenzuela said the funding would go toward scaling in-house research and expanding the team across research, engineering and product, rather than toward any specific named product.

The round is notable chiefly for its investor list: Google and Nvidia, both later strategic backers of multiple generative-media start-ups, and Salesforce Ventures, an active corporate investor across the wider AI sector, all bought in months before ChatGPT-driven investment interest in generative AI peaked. It set the valuation base from which Runway’s subsequent Series D, at roughly double the price less than two years later, was measured.