Runware raises $50M Series A to power all intelligent applications
Led by Dawn Capital, our $50M Series A accelerates our mission to provide one unified API for all AI models with industry-leading performance and economics.
Introduction
Today, we are announcing our $50M Series A, led by Dawn Capital with participation from Comcast Ventures, DST, Speedinvest, Insight Partners and a16z speedrun. This round helps us continue building what has become the core of our mission: one API for all AI.
Runware was founded in 2023 to make high-performance AI inference accessible to every product team. In two years, we have powered more than 10 billion generations for 200K+ developers and more than 300 million end-users worldwide. All of it runs through a single unified API supported by our custom hardware and Sonic Inference Engine®.
Why we're building this
Most teams hit the same blockers when trying to ship AI at scale: fragmented access to AI models, slow inference that breaks user experience, and costs that increase faster than adoption. We built Runware to remove those constraints completely.
Our approach combines custom AI inference hardware with an optimized software stack that reaches up to ten times lower pricing and faster performance than traditional data-center deployments. The result is a platform that allows developers to integrate any AI model, scale to millions of users, and keep costs predictable.
What the platform can already do
Runware now aggregates almost 300 AI model classes and hundreds of thousands of model variants behind one consistent schema and endpoint. Teams can A/B test, route, or swap models with only minor code changes. For open source AI models, we deliver a consistent speed improvement of around thirty to forty percent compared with other inference platforms. For both open and closed source models, we deliver a step change in cost efficiency, up to 10x better price and performance for open source models and ten to forty percent savings for closed source foundational AI models.
Our customers include Wix, Together.ai, ImagineArt, Quora, OpenArt, Freepik and Higgsfield AI, along with dozens of private enterprise deployments. They rely on us to power image, video and audio generation for millions of users.
What's next
The demand for AI inference is growing rapidly, with the market expected to reach almost 70 billion dollars by 2028. To meet this scale, we are expanding our platform and extending the Sonic Inference Engine. Our aim is to make every AI model available to every developer through a single API. That includes deploying all two million plus new AI models from Hugging Face to Runware by the end of 2026.
We are also continuing to build and deploy our inference PODs. These PODs can be placed wherever power is available and affordable, avoiding multi-year data center buildouts and reducing both capital and operational expenditure. A new POD can be deployed in weeks rather than years, allowing us to place compute near users and remain aligned with local regulatory environments.
As Flaviu, our co-founder and CEO, puts it: "We are building infrastructure that can run AI faster, more cost-effectively, and with higher redundancy". Ioana, our co-founder and COO, adds that "the goal is to give teams a single API that lets them roll out any AI model in minutes without juggling providers or committing to huge minimums. When developers can focus on product, they unlock new features and growth peaks for their users."
A note from our investors
Dawn Capital believes this is the right moment for a platform that unifies access to AI models, improves economics and delivers an enterprise-grade developer experience. As they put it, "Runware sits at the right layer of the stack, built by a team who understands both the hardware and software required to bend the cost curve for customers."
Looking ahead
This funding allows us to scale our technology, expand our team and continue building the most efficient inference platform for developers worldwide. The mission remains simple: give every company the ability to run AI at the speed and cost required for real products.
We are only at the beginning of what AI-powered media and applications will become. Thank you to our community of developers, customers and partners for helping us get here.
Ready to build with unified AI inference? Check our documentation to get started, or join our Discord community to connect with other developers building the future of AI applications.
For enterprise deployments and production partnerships, contact our team to discuss your specific requirements and integration support.