US AI company Runway is planning a major expansion in London, CNBC has learned, following Anthropic and OpenAI as US tech companies increasingly look to capitalize on the city’s commercial and talent opportunities.
Runway, which builds global models, exclusively told CNBC on Monday that the company plans to make London its new European headquarters and will invest more than $200 million in the UK’s AI ecosystem by the end of 2028.
The company recently raised $315 million in Series E funding featuring General Atlantic. AMD Ventures and Nvidiaresulting in a valuation of $5.3 billion.
“London is close to many of Europe’s largest customers who are already working seriously with Runway, including the BBC, Fremantle and WPP, and we are building on the research team we already have in London,” Anastasis Germanidis, co-founder and co-CEO of Runway, told CNBC.
“The talent pool is exceptional and we felt London was the perfect place to start,” he added. “We plan to expand further across Europe in the near future.”
Runway co-founders: Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamara Ortiz, Anastasis Germanidis. Credit: Runway
A world model is an AI system that can learn from inputs such as audio, images, video, and real-world data. Large-scale language models (LLMs), on the other hand, are designed primarily to understand and generate language, rather than modeling the physical world from real-world sensory input.
Runway builds these models while providing a suite of video generation and editing tools.
“Runway’s new London base will bring pioneering research on global models to the UK, driving breakthroughs across industries, from film and games to science and robotics,” UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said in a statement. “We want the world’s most ambitious AI companies to build their future here, and that’s exactly what Runway is doing.”
Runway is one of several U.S. AI companies to recently announce major growth plans in London.
Anthropic announced in April that it would expand its presence in London with new office space capable of accommodating 800 people, days after rival Open AI announced plans to build its first permanent office in the UK capital. google The company also plans to move employees to its new headquarters in the UK this summer.
