Runway
He grew up making home videos in Santiago. He calls AI a new medium. The homepage sells a product.
The buried story
Cristóbal Valenzuela grew up in Santiago, Chile, making home videos with his friends. He borrowed films from the library and paid his way through university shooting promo videos for local businesses.
In 2016 he came across Deep Dream, a neural network that generated images. The pictures weren't what hooked him. "How it was created is what really caught my attention."
He went on to NYU's Tisch program, where art meets engineering, and met his cofounders there. His view of the work hasn't changed since: "AI is on a similar level. It's a new medium that requires a new sort of artist."
That's the strongest aspiration in creative AI. Runway's homepage doesn't open with it.
Where Runway stands
Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala and Anastasis Germanidis founded Runway in 2018. In 2022 it co-released Stable Diffusion, and its tools were used on Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won seven Oscars including Best Picture.
Its AI Film Festival grew from 300 submissions in 2023 to more than 6,000 in 2025, with winners screened at Lincoln Center and in IMAX theaters. In 2026 Runway raised $315 million at a $5.3 billion valuation.
The brand line: "Making it easy to create any content you can imagine."
Why the line falls short
That line is an accurate product promise. Sora, Pika and Kling could all say the same thing.
Runway can claim something its rivals can't. It's building tools for a new art form, and it runs the film festival that shows the art form already exists.
Friction (8.0). Rotoscoping, cleanup and effects used to take specialists days and budgets. Runway cuts that to minutes. Rivals name the same problem, though.
Lived Stake (9.0). One of the highest in the series. Valenzuela was making films long before he built tools for filmmakers, and the Deep Dream moment ties straight to the company.
Distinctive Qualification (7.5). Stable Diffusion, an Oscar-winning film and a festival with real institutions behind it. Revenue of about $90 million against a $5.3 billion valuation keeps the score in check.
Real Aspiration (7.0). "A new medium that requires a new sort of artist" lives in interviews and in the festival. It isn't the first thing a visitor reads.
The story Runway should tell
I grew up in Santiago making videos with friends because we couldn't afford anything more. The camera gave the last century cinema. AI is giving this one a new medium, and we're building the tools for the artists who will define it.
Three moves to raise the score
1. Lead with the new medium. Put "the next medium of storytelling" on the homepage, and have Valenzuela write the long version: what AI cinema's first great works will look like and who will make them. Real Aspiration: 7.0 to 9.0.
2. Tell the Santiago story first. A short founder piece that runs from library films to Deep Dream to Runway, on the About page and in every launch. Lived Stake: 9.0 to 9.5.
3. Treat the festival as an institution. Present it as the place the new medium's canon is forming, with Everything Everywhere All at Once as the proof that the tools are production grade. Distinctive Qualification: 7.5 to 8.5.
If all three land, Runway moves from 7.9 to about 8.8.
