Flavio Radulescu started Runware in 2023, when he was piloting a text-to-image conversion company and realized that while genetic AI technology was powerful, it was slow at generating images. So Radulescu teamed up with Ioana Hreninciuc and launched Runware as a programming tool platform specializing in real-time image, video and audio creation.
The company has seen a lot of growth since it first launched. It has powered more than 10 billion builds for more than 200,000 developers, the company told TechCrunch.
The product allows developers to integrate Runware’s API into their applications and then create media components through one interface, so they don’t have to build new infrastructure or maintain separate integrations. It has a custom AI inference infrastructure for open-source models and provides zero-day access (meaning once 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 in a round led by Dawn Capital. Dawn Capital partner Shamillah Bankiya joins the board. Others in the round include Comcast Ventures, Speedinvest, 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 integrated API. He said the company does this with the Sonic Inference Engine, which runs on custom AI hardware. It also works with third-party AI cloud providers so it can automatically reroute workloads when more memory is needed.
“On the software side, we greatly optimize model loading and unloading, which allows us to support over 400,000 models and make any of them available for real-time inference,” he continued.
Startups focused on programming tools for image and video have been a particularly hot market for VC interest lately. Fal.ai, for example, 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 adjusting for speed. So Hreninciuc sees Fal.ai and Replicate, a startup that runs open source models on apps with just a few lines of code, as competitors.
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These companies, as Radulescu previously told TechCrunch, sell based on GPU computing time. Instead, Runware leans towards the Stable Diffusion and Flux model, offering a higher cost per image created so that people can pay for what they need instead of buying a block of computing time.
Hreninciuc said the new capital will be used to continue expanding the company’s infrastructure and hopes to use the Sonic Inference Engine to power over 2 million models. The big goal is to be the API for all AI — so that any AI production model can and does work on the platform.
“We’re also expanding quickly into new ways,” he said, adding that the company is set to expand its current team of about 25 people to help do that.
Overall, Hreninciuc hopes Runware will continue to “make it possible for apps to scale to millions of users while maintaining their profit margins,” she said, adding that it helps make the market more affordable. This “benefits everyone,” he continued. “From app developers to end users and putting powerful AI into the hands of more people worldwide.”
This piece has been updated to correct the spelling of Radulescu‘small name and let us know who the competitors are, and who else participated in the round.
