AI company Runway valued at $1.5 billion in latest funding - source

(Reuters) - AI company Runway has been valued at $1.5 billion in its latest round of funding, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, after it raised $141 million from investors, including Alphabet-owned Google and Nvidia.

The extension to the Series C funding round also included Salesforce Ventures and Runway's existing investors, the company said in a statement.

The runaway success of ChatGPT and the potential of AI to transform businesses have driven venture capital firms and big technology companies to pour billions of dollars into startups that are working on the cutting-edge technology.

"Generative AI is transforming the content creation industry, breathing new life into stories and ideas that were not imaginable," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

Runway's software allows users to transform or tweak existing videos or create new videos by using text prompts or images. The company also launched a mobile app earlier this year, giving its users access to its generative AI tools.

Earlier in the day, another AI startup Inflection raised $1.3 billion from Microsoft at a valuation of $4 billion, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

(Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru and Krystal Hu in Toronto; Editing by Anil D'Silva)