Runway, a startup with 100 employees, released an AI video model that generates videos of higher quality than Google's OpenAI competitors.

On Monday (December 1st) local time, US AI startup Runway launched Gen-4.5, a new video model that outperformed similar products from Google and OpenAI in independent benchmark tests.

Gen-4.5 can generate high-definition video content based on user-provided text prompts, describing motion and movement. Runway stated that the model excels in understanding physical laws, human movement, camera movement, and causal relationships.

The model ranked first on the Video Arena leaderboard of independent AI benchmarking and analysis company Artificial Analysis, while Google's Veo 3 ranked second and OpenAI's Sora 2 Pro ranked seventh.

The ranking of text-to-video models in this leaderboard was determined through a blind vote: people compared the output videos of two models and voted for the better one, without knowing which company was being voted on.

In an interview, Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela stated, "We beat trillion-dollar companies with only a team of 100 people. With extreme focus and hard work, you can reach the forefront of technology."

Founded in 2018, Runway conducts AI research, building video and world models—models trained on video and observational data to more realistically reflect how the physical world works.

Currently, Runway's clients include media organizations, film studios, brands, designers, creators, and students, but the company has only 120 employees.

According to PitchBook data, its valuation has ballooned to $3.55 billion. Investors include General Atlantic, Baillie Gifford, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures.

Valenzuela stated that Gen-4.5's internal codename is "David," symbolizing the biblical story of David defeating Goliath (the underdog triumphing over the strong). He said this model "is a product that could become famous overnight, but took seven years to build."

"This is indeed a very interesting time; an era of efficiency and research is dawning," Valenzuela said. "We are very excited to ensure that AI is not monopolized by two or three companies."

Runway stated that Gen-4.5 is being rolled out gradually and will be available to all clients this week. Valenzuela stated that this is the first in a series of major updates the company will be releasing soon.

"It will be available through Runway's platform, its application programming interface (API), and some of the company's partner channels."