Cristobal Valenzuela is the Co-founder and CEO of Runway, a global applied AI research company building foundational multimodal AI models and tools to power the next era of human creativity and storytelling.
Originally from Santiago, Chile, Cristobal studied economics and business management at Adolfo Ibanez University, then earned a master's degree from NYU Tisch's Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he researched computational creativity.
Cristobal believes AI tools exist to amplify human imagination, and as an artist-turned-engineer, he brings a rare creative perspective to building generative AI infrastructure for storytelling.
Before founding Runway in 2018 alongside Anastasis Germanidis and Alejandro Matamala, Cristobal served as a computational creativity researcher at NYU, where the three co-founders first united around a shared vision for AI-generated content.
Runway has raised over $860 million in total funding at a $5.3 billion valuation, with its technology used in major productions like Everything Everywhere All at Once, earning Cristobal recognition on the TIME100 Most Influential People in AI list.
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