A New Media Landscape

October 2024

Runway is not an AI company. Runway is a media and entertainment company. And I actually think the era of AI companies is over.

It's not because AI failed - quite the opposite. It's because AI is becoming infrastructure, as fundamental as electricity or the internet. Calling yourself an AI company today is like calling yourself an internet company in 2024. It's meaningless because it's universal. Every company uses the internet; every company will use AI.

For Runway, our focus is art, media, and entertainment at large. We began Runway almost seven years ago with a vision that remains largely unchanged today: AI is a necessary tool for storytelling. To achieve that vision, we had to work backwards to build the best research team that could deliver the best models on which we could build the best products.

I often talk about our work as a new kind of camera.^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5} Not in the literal sense of capturing images, but in terms of its historical impact. The camera didn't just create photography - it birthed entire industries, economies, and art forms. Cinema, television, TikTok - all children of that first revolutionary tool that could capture light and time.

I think the work we are doing at Runway is part of a new foundation for an entirely new media landscape. Just as the camera transformed how we capture reality, AI is transforming how we create it. The models and technical capabilities we've built are just the beginning - they're the equivalent of those first daguerreotypes, primitive yet pregnant with possibility. The mistake many make is seeing AI as the end goal. It's not. AI is the mechanism, the underlying infrastructure that enables something greater. The real revolution isn't in the technology itself but in what it enables: new forms of expression, new ways of telling stories, new methods of connecting human experiences.

Media has traditionally operated like a one-way street. Creation flows down established channels to reach consumers. Even when distribution was disrupted - first by social media, then by streaming - the fundamental pattern remained: someone creates, others consume. The roles were clear, the boundaries defined. But we're witnessing something different now. Imagine watching a show that generates itself as you watch it - truly dynamic content that responds to you, understands you, creates for you. Universal Simulation and world building. The distinction between creation and distribution dissolves when content can shape itself in real-time. That is the foundation for an entirely new media landscape. It's about fundamentally reimagining what media can be: interactive, generative, personal - yet simultaneously shared and universal.

This is also why pure AI companies are becoming obsolete. The interesting questions aren't about the technology anymore - they're about what we build with it. The next wave of innovation won't come from companies focused on building better models. Models are commodities. The technical foundations are now well-established and known by everyone. There are no secrets. The wave of change will come from those who understand how to use these tools to create new forms of media, new types of experiences, new ways of telling stories. The infrastructure is laid. The foundation is built. Now comes the exciting part: creating something meaningful with it.

The end of AI companies marks the beginning of something far more interesting: the birth of truly new media. Not just new platforms or formats, but entirely new ways of creating and experiencing content. We're not building an AI company anymore. And that's a far more exciting mission. Like it has always been; back to our roots.