The large model landscape has been particularly lively in the first half of this year but has cooled down in the second half.
Undertaking foundational large model research is akin to a marathon, characterized by high R&D costs, high technical barriers, and intense iterative competition. Take OpenAI, for instance, which incurs an annual loss of $5 billion due to its R&D efforts. Such financial pressure is clearly beyond the reach of most AI startups. These companies often prioritize commercialization and profitability.
AI's journey to find its niche has seen video generation as one of the closest tracks to practical application. However, today, the CEO of Runway, the "top player" in AI video generation, has declared the end of AI companies. In his open letter, the first sentence reads: "I believe the era of AI companies is over."
Runway Co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Barrera
The full text of the letter is as follows:
Runway is not an AI company. Runway is a media and entertainment company. In fact, I believe the era of AI companies is over.
This is not because AI has failed—on the contrary, it is because AI is becoming infrastructure like electricity or the internet. In 2024, calling yourself an AI company is as meaningless as calling yourself an internet company in 2024. Everyone uses it—every company uses the internet; every company will use AI.
For Runway, our focus is on art, media, and the broader entertainment sector. Our vision when we founded Runway seven years ago remains unchanged: AI is an essential tool for storytelling. To realize this vision, we had to take the opposite approach, building the best research team to support the best products with the best models.
I often compare our work to a new type of "camera." This "camera" does not literally capture images but refers to a longer historical scale. The camera not only created photography—it spawned entire industries, economies, and art forms. Film, television, TikTok—all of these originated from that revolutionary tool that captures light and time.
I believe Runway's work is laying the foundation for a new media landscape. Just as the camera changed how we capture reality, AI is changing how we create reality. The models and technologies Runway builds are just the beginning—they are akin to those early daguerreotypes, primitive yet full of infinite possibilities.
Daguerreotype is an early photographic technique invented by the Frenchman Louis Daguerre in 1839.
Many mistakenly view AI as the ultimate goal. They are wrong; AI is merely a tool, a means to support greater achievements. The real revolution is not in the technology itself but in what it can achieve: creating new forms of expression, new ways of storytelling, and new methods of connecting human experiences.
Traditional media is like a one-way street. Creation flows through established channels to consumers. Even as distribution was first disrupted by social media and streaming, this basic model persisted: someone creates, others consume. Roles are clear, boundaries are defined. However, we are now witnessing a new situation.
Imagine a show that generates content automatically as you watch—a truly dynamic content that responds to you, understands you, and is tailored just for you. Simulating a world where content can self-shape in real-time dissolves the boundaries between creation and distribution. This is not only the foundation for building a new media landscape but will fundamentally redefine media: it is interactive, generative, personalized, and simultaneously shared and universal.
This is why pure AI companies are becoming obsolete. The fundamental issue to address now is no longer just technology—but what we can create with it. The next wave of innovation will not come from companies focused on research models. Models have become a commodity. The technical foundation is now solid, with no secrets in the industry. True transformation will come from those who know how to use these tools to create new media forms, new experiences, and new narrative methods. The infrastructure is in place; the real action is yet to come: creating meaningful things with AI.
The end of AI companies marks a new beginning: the birth of new media. This is not just a new platform or format but a new way of creating and experiencing content. We are no longer committed to building an AI company. This is a more exciting mission, one that Runway has always pursued: returning to our初心.
"Dramatic" Runway
Runway was founded in 2018, with its founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela Barrera believing in the enormous potential of AI in the field of art creation. Therefore, Runway has been dedicated to providing tools and platforms for designers, artists, and developers since its inception.
Runway Founding Team: From left to right: Alejandro Matamala, Cristóbal Valenzuela Barrera, Anastasis Germanidis
Looking back at Runway's development, we find some "dramatic" events: the behind-the-scenes team of Stable Diffusion clashing, suddenly deleting the HuggingFace repository...
Today, when we mention Stable Diffusion, we might think it is the research work of Stability AI. However, the technical origin of this model is a paper published in CVPR 2022 titled "High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models," with five authors from the University of Munich, Heidelberg University, and Runway. In 2022, Runway announced the release of Stable Diffusion v1.5 and had a dispute with Stability AI over the copyright of Stable Diffusion.
In late August of this year, Runway suddenly deleted and cleared all its content on HuggingFace, including Stable Diffusion v1.5. On the Hugging Face homepage, Runway stated that it no longer maintains HuggingFace.
Despite these dramatic events, Runway has continued to make efforts in the field of visual generation. For example, recently, Runway's video generation foundational model Gen-3 Alpha can create high-definition videos with complex scene changes, various film styles, and detailed artistic direction.
Recently, Gen-3 Alpha also released a new feature—Act-One, which allows users to upload a video to drive video characters to make the same expressions and actions, revolutionizing the motion capture industry.
If "the era of AI companies is over," then Runway seems to have been creating tools and value in the fields of art, media, and broader entertainment. Perhaps, as the CEO said, AI will be an infrastructure in the future, and it is more worth thinking about and exploring the direction of AI applications.
Do you agree with Runway CEO's viewpoint?
Reference Link: https://cvalenzuelab.com/newmedia?continueFlag=f3092b4cb56e4530d15c61194d05f9f9