Founders Funnel Previous $40M Series B into NEW AI Venture OutRival
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I have been saying that the next year, 2024, or sorry, 2025, is going to be the year of AI and video. And there's always new news coming out in this space. I think it's really accelerating compared to even other areas of AI. And today is no exception to that.

which is one of the biggest AI video generators, has announced that they have set aside $5 million to fund up to 100 films that are using AI to generate the video for them. So this is something really interesting to me. This is something very, very exciting. So much is happening in this space right now.

Let's dive into all of it. Before that, I wanted to say if you've ever wanted to make money from AI, whether that's a side hustle or scaling and growing your business, I would love to have you join the AI Hustle School community. This is a community where every single week I produce exclusive content. I don't post anywhere else where I'm breaking down the exact businesses I'm trying, side hustles I'm doing, tools and AI, uh,

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Eventually it will be $100 a month. Right now it is $19 a month to join. And if you lock in the price, it will never get raised on you. So let's jump back into what exactly Runway is doing. So really impressively, Runway has done a bunch of different things. I think they're quite famous for, I've been watching for the last two years now, they host these like film festivals where indie filmmakers make videos with Runway. It's kind of interesting because at the beginning,

They were very, very basic. Like I remember watching some of these where it was like, you could tell they, they started out with a shot of like a person, but because they couldn't replicate the same person, they would then like just show the back of a person's head and all of the subsequent shots in the, in the film. So they were definitely had a lot of limitations. The technology has come a

very long way where you can try to get like the same person throughout like different shots and all sorts of impressive things, including uploading an image and having it generate a video from that image. So you could use AI to generate an image with the same person in it, um, or go take a bunch of pictures and essentially have it animate pictures. A lot of different things you can do with runway, but now they're setting aside a $5 million. They're a big proponent of just growing, uh,

the industry and helping i guess support ai inside of filmmaking um they've set aside five million dollars and they're gonna fund a hundred different original films so if you are uh looking to be an ai director if you're curious about the whole industry i think this is an amazing time to get backing to do this so it's called runway's hundred film fund that's uh what they've dubbed this essentially um and

It's doing some really interesting stuff. Specifically, what they said about it is, quote, traditional funding mechanisms often overlook new and emerging visions with the larger industry ecosystem. So they're saying this in a blog post. Specifically, all of this is a grant. So when they give the money, it's not like you have to pay it back or anything. It's just straight up going to be giving to different filmmakers. And the whole idea that they're going to be creating is, quote,

features, shorts, documentaries, experimental projects, music videos, and of course, if you have any other unknown formats that they're excited about, I think they'll also fund those. So what's really interesting to me is that if you get one of these awards, it's also going to come with up to $2 million in runway credits. So I don't believe they're giving $2 million away to each person that gets that award, but I think that that's just...

they're, you know, that's how much they've allotted total perhaps. Um, it doesn't say that the cash side has, or I guess the, the announcement when they made this whole post, it says that. So right now they set aside like $5 million, but they said that that $5 million has quote, the potential to grow to $10 million. Um,

So someone reached out to Runway and asked them what they meant by this. And James Umpherson, so he's Runway's head of creative, he essentially said that they wanted to, quote, be as flexible as possible in how we approach the scope of this fund. We're starting with

100 films, but we hope to do more over time. So this is actually exciting to me. It seems like they're really excited about this, right? They're like, all right, we're putting away $5 million. Maybe it'll be $10 million. We're going to give you guys millions of dollars in tokens to actually run on runway. And that's what I, when I first saw this headline, I wasn't sure. I'm like, oh man, is this just like,

they're giving away like credits on their platform because it's pretty expensive to generate a lot of these videos, but no, they're giving away credits and actual cash. So you can use the cash to do a lot of the other areas of filmmaking, which makes me think there's going to be some really impressive films coming out of this, which I am.

incredibly excited for it. Now, some people are asking, why would they do this? You know, what's the point? To me, the point is very obvious, right? They want to create the best films possible that come out of AI. They want some of these things to go viral. A lot of people to watch a documentary or a whole film created by AI. And then to be like, this thing was created by runway. All of a sudden they become very viable for Hollywood producers, Hollywood, you know, production teams, runways already making deals with, I believe Lionsgate to be their supplier of AI generated videos for Hollywood

films that they're making in the future. So big Hollywood producers and places are already using Runway and I think they want to grow that. So how exactly this $5 million is going to be divided?

Apparently, it's going to be divided 100 ways, so up to $1 million grants are possible. And then I think they'll do much smaller grants too. If you need 10,000 or 20,000 or smaller grants, they'll do that as well. But the biggest they'll do for one individual would be $1 million. So if you had a really phenomenal idea but it needed a really big budget, you could get up to $1 million from it.

Talking about all of this, Runway said, quote, each project will be assessed on its own particular production needs when it comes to grant considerations. They got a bunch of fine print. You can read about it. But in any case, my assumption is if you have some clout, maybe you are already kind of like a director that's doing some things. That's the people that are going to be getting more money, right? They want the experts to be getting extra because, you know, they'll be making something more impressive theoretically than just perhaps regular people.

So good news is Runway is not going to have any sort of ownership control over the projects that are created. They only are requiring that you send bi-weekly production updates, right? They don't want to have one of those situations that I think Netflix ran into where they gave someone...

millions of dollars and they spent it all on like Bitcoin or, and lost it all. Uh, so they want you to actually say what, you know, what you're building. Um, and then of course they have to be allowed to showcase the final result. However they see fit, right. Use it as commercials, use it for whatever they want. They have a bunch of different advisors, Trebekka films, um, film festival, co-founder Jane Rosenthal, and then also will I am who are going to help select the winners, um, maybe even offer some extra support. Um,

Obviously, this whole film fund, they're going to say, please use our product, although I

I think that you're allowed to use AI and other things as well for the films that you create. So as long as you're using that, um, and so, yeah, I think this is really exciting, um, to see kind of what's coming down the pipe and what people are going to be able to create. No doubt. I think people are going to create some really incredible, um, shots, runways, amazing company. I'd be curious to see what a fully AI generated film looks like versus a film that is using, um,

you know part real film part photos that get animated by runway part runway generated like you could see like all sorts of combinations of really incredible films and i think next year is the year of ai and video i've been saying that for about a year now and i think we're about to see it especially with all this money all of this technology going in the space phenomenal times i'm super excited i will keep you up to date on all of that and where it goes and if you're interested in making money yourself go and apply for this if you're interested in making

videos if videos are not your thing, or even if they are. I would also love to have you join the AI Hustle school community that I host, where I share all of the techniques and tools, exclusive content on making money with AI. Hope to see you there, and I will see you next week.