Runware raises $50M Series A to accelerate AI inference for developers building with generative AI

Runware raises $50M Series A to help make image, video generation easier for developers | TechCrunch

Flaviu Radulesc started Runware in 2023 when he was testing a text-to-image company and realized that, though genAI tech was powerful, it was slow in generating images. So Radulesc teamed up with Ioana Hreninciuc and launched Runware as a dev tool platform that specializes in generating images, videos, and audio in real time. The company has seen much growth since it first launched. It has powered more than 5 billion creations for more than 100,000 developers, the company told TechCrunch. The product lets developers integrate Runware's API into their apps and then generate media assets through one interface, so they don't have to set up any new infrastructure or maintain separate integrations. It has a custom AI inference infrastructure for open-source models, and provides day-zero access (meaning as soon as a model is released, it can run on Runware) and competitive pricing, Hreninciuc, who focuses on operations and GTM, told TechCrunch. On Thursday, the company announced a $50 million Series A in a round led by Dawn Capital. Dawn Capital Partner Shamillah Bankiya is joining the board. Others in the round include Insight Partners and a16z Speedrun. Runware has raised $66 million in funding to date. Hreninciuc said the company remains competitive through its pricing, which is "more-cost effective," in addition to having a fully unified API. She said the company does this with its Sonic Inference Engine, which runs on custom AI hardware. It also partners with third-party AI cloud providers so that it can reroute workloads automatically in case more memory is needed. "On the software side, we heavily optimize model loading and offloading, which lets us support over 400,000 models and make any of them available for inference in real time," she continued. Startups that focus on dev tools for image and video have been a particularly hot market for VC interest lately. Fal.ai, for instance, just raised $140 million at a $4.5 billion valuation, its second giant raise in a matter of months. Fal.ai focuses on the breadth of model offerings versus customizing for speed. So, Hreninciuc considers her competitors to be general open-source model makers, such as Hugging Face; Replicate, a startup that runs open-source models in apps with just a few lines of code; and Together AI, a similar genAI model hoster. These companies, as Radulescu previously told TechCrunch, sell based on GPU compute time. Runware instead leans toward the model of Stable Diffusion and Flux, offering a more cost-per-image generated so that people can pay for what they need rather than buying a block of compute time. Hreninciuc said the fresh capital will be used to keep expanding the company's infrastructure and it hopes to use its Sonic Inference Engine to power over 2 million models. The big goal is to be the API for all AI -- so that any generative AI model can and does run on the platform. "We're also expanding rapidly into new modalities," she said, adding that the company is going to expand the current team of around 25 to help make that happen. Overall, Hreninciuc hopes Runware continues to "make it possible for applications to scale to millions of users while actually keeping their margins," she said, adding that it helps make the market more affordable. That "benefits everyone," she continued. "From the app builders to the end users, and puts powerful AI into more people's hands globally."

AI inference startup Runware raises $50M to make AI run faster - SiliconANGLE

Artificial intelligence startup Runware Ltd. wants to make high-performance inference accessible to every company and application developer after raising $50 million in an early-stage funding round. Announced today, the Series A round is backed by some significant investors, including Dawn Capital, which led it, plus Comcast Ventures, Insight Partners, a16z Speedrun and Speedinvest. It brings Runware's total amount raised to date to $66 million, underscoring the potential of its high-performance inference platform that specializes in real-time AI image, video and audio generation. The startup was founded in 2023 by the Romanian developer duo Flaviu Radulescu and Ioana Hreninciuc during the early days of the AI boom. They immediately saw the potential of the first AI image and video generation tools, but they also became frustrated by how slowly they took to generate their outputs, and consequently decided to do something about it. In a blog post, Radulescu said slow inference is a major impediment to teams trying to ship AI at large scale, as it tends to break the user experience. He also pointed to other problems, including fragmented access to the leading large language models and high costs. "We built Runware to remove those constraints completely," he wrote. "Our approach combines custom AI inference hardware with an optimized software stack that reaches up to ten times lower pricing and faster performance than traditional data-center deployments." Runware's inference platform is powered by the Sonic Inference Engine and custom hardware. It can be integrated into any app via the company's application programming interface, meaning that customers don't have to worry about the underlying infrastructure of the LLMs they choose or maintain separate integrations. The startup has carefully customized its inference infrastructure for open-source models, and provides zero-day access to new releases, meaning customers will always be able to use the latest versions of popular models. The startup sources its infrastructure from cloud providers and says it can reroute the most demanding workloads when more memory is needed to ensure they can be processed rapidly. "On the software side, we heavily optimize model loading and offloading, which lets us support over 400,000 models and make any of them available for inference in real time," Hreninciuc told TechCrunch in an interview. In essence, Runware can speed up inference for basically any open source model and get them to spit out their outputs in real time, and for that reason it has proved to be immensely popular. The company said it has powered more than 10 billion generations for over 200,000 developers in its first two years, supporting more than 300 million end users globally. Its customers include the AI startup Together Computer Inc., the question-and-answer forum Quora Inc., the image sharing website Freepik Inc. and the website builder Wix.com Inc. Runware faces a number of competitors in trying to optimize AI inference, some of the most notable being Fal.ai and Replicate Inc. Fal.ai has raised far more money, recently closing on a $140 million round that valued it at $4.5 billion, but it's much more focused on the scope of its model range rather than on inference speed. One of the main differences between Runware and its rivals is its pricing. Fal.ai and Replicate both charge customers based on compute time, whereas Runware charges a simple cost-per-image to its customers, meaning they pay only for what they need. Hreninciuc told TechCrunch the company will use the funds from today's round to enhance its Sonic Inference Engine and make it even faster, while expanding it to support more than 2 million AI models. In addition, it's going to look at supporting new modalities besides image, video and audio generation, with its ultimate goal to become "the API for all AI," she said.