Runware, a company focused on delivering high-performance and cost-effective AI services, has announced a $13 million seed funding round. The investment was led by Insight Partners, with additional support from a16z Speedrun, Begin Capital, and Zero Prime. This funding will help Runware expand its capabilities beyond image and video generation to include audio, large language models (LLMs), and 3D media workflows.
Since its launch less than a year ago, Runware has already made a significant impact. Its platform has generated over four billion visual assets and onboarded more than 100,000 developers. The company’s API powers media inference for more than 250 million end users through partnerships with platforms like Quora, NightCafe, OpenArt, and FocalML. Runware hosts over 400,000 AI models, making it one of the most extensive hubs for media generation tools.
At the heart of Runware’s technology is its proprietary Sonic Inference Engine. This system combines custom-built hardware and software to deliver faster and more affordable AI media generation. As demand for compute-heavy tasks like video generation grows, many companies face rising GPU costs. Runware offers a solution by enabling up to ten times cost savings compared to traditional cloud providers. Its unified API also simplifies integration, allowing developers to switch between models with just a parameter change, saving time and reducing complexity.
The company is now investing heavily in expanding its engine to support all types of media generation. It already integrates models from major players like OpenAI, ByteDance, Google, and Alibaba, and is actively adding support for audio and LLMs. This means developers can build full-featured content creation tools using Runware’s API in just minutes, without needing to manage multiple endpoints or build costly infrastructure.
Runware’s approach is attractive for developers and product teams who want to launch AI features quickly and affordably. Its vertically integrated design, which includes custom GPUs and networking hardware, allows it to optimize performance and reduce costs by up to 90 percent. These savings are passed directly to customers, making Runware a compelling choice for anyone building AI-powered applications.
The company also emphasizes flexibility. Developers can mix and match models, use batch processing, and apply advanced editing techniques like ControlNet and LoRA across different media types. This level of customization was previously limited to image generation but now extends to video and other formats.
KEY QUOTES:
“As more and more models launch, devs can have tens or even hundreds of endpoints to integrate with and maintain. We see model providers now moving to our platform and offering their APIs from our inference pod, because we can deliver up to 90% lower inference cost than any cloud provider.”
Flaviu Radulescu, Founder at Runware
“Runware is a hidden gem every serious AI application should consider. It offers incredibly competitive pricing across top models, consistently strong performance, and responsive, helpful customer support. If you’re building with AI, Runware should be on your radar.”
Coco Mao, CEO at OpenArt
“The core of Runware’s advantage is its purpose-built Sonic Inference Engine®. While others often rely on commodity cloud infrastructure, Runware built its own workload-specific infrastructure — giving it control over latency, throughput, and cost at a fundamental level. That technical edge can be transformational and is what makes Runware a performance leader in AI media generation.”
George Mathew, Managing Director at Insight Partners. Mathew joins Runware’s board as part of the fundraise.
“We chose Runware as our primary inference partner for their price and the flexibility of the API. NightCafe users are avid explorers of AI – they want to try all the models, hyperparameters, LoRAs and other options. On other providers there are often different endpoints for all these things, but not a single endpoint that combines them all. On Runware it’s a single endpoint that we send all the user’s options to. It also happens to be less than half – sometimes less than 1/5 – of the cost of other providers.”
Angus Russell, Founder at NightCafe
“We moved to Runware on a day where we had a big traffic surge. Their API was easy to integrate and handled the sudden load very smoothly. Their combination of quality, speed, and price was by far the best in the market, and they’ve been excellent partners as we’ve scaled up.”
Robert Cunningham, Co-Founder at Focal
