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Runway Picks London as European HQ With $200M UK Pledge

 

Nvidia-backed AI video firm Runway designates London its European headquarters, committing more than $200 million to the UK's AI ecosystem by 2028.

 

 

London has been designated the European headquarters of Runway, the New York-based artificial intelligence company, which disclosed on Monday a commitment to invest more than $200 million into the United Kingdom's AI ecosystem by the end of 2028. The company made the announcement exclusively to CNBC. The move positions Runway alongside a cohort of American AI companies that have recently formalised significant presences in the British capital.

 

Runway Cites BBC, Fremantle and WPP in London Rationale

 

Runway co-founder and co-chief executive Anastasis Germanidis told CNBC: "London puts us close to many of our largest European customers already doing serious work with Runway, including BBC, Fremantle and WPP, and it builds on the research team we already have here. The talent pool is exceptional, and London felt like the right place to start." The London operation will expand an existing research presence rather than establish one from the ground up. Germanidis added that Runway expects to expand further across Europe in the near future.

 

The UK government responded directly to the announcement. Kanishka Narayan, the UK's minister for AI, said in a statement: "Runway's new London hub will bring pioneering research into world models to the UK, helping power breakthroughs across industries from film and gaming to science and robotics. We want the world's most ambitious AI firms to build their future here, and that is exactly what Runway is doing."

 

A $5.3 Billion Company With Nvidia, General Atlantic and AMD on Its Cap Table

 

Runway's most recent funding round was a $315 million Series E led by General Atlantic, which included participation from Nvidia, Adobe Ventures, AMD Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Co. and Felicis Ventures, among others. The capital was raised at a $5.3 billion valuation, up from $3.3 billion at the time of its $308 million Series D round. In total, the New York-based startup has raised $860 million since its 2018 inception. Runway's world-model infrastructure runs on Nvidia hardware, making the chipmaker's involvement material to both its research operation and its geographic expansion narrative.

 

Runway describes itself as an applied AI research company building world models for universal simulation, as well as video generation models that it says are used by tens of millions of consumers and enterprises.

 

The company began with its Gen-series tools — software that produces short video clips from text or images — and has since repositioned its core ambition around world models: AI systems that construct internal representations of physical environments in order to simulate and plan within them.

 

The new funding is directed at pre-training what Runway calls the next generation of world models and bringing them into new products and industries. The company has identified film, gaming, science and robotics as primary target sectors, a scope that places it in direct competition with Google, which is also developing world model technology.

 

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google Have Each Recently Committed to London

 

Runway's establishment of a London headquarters arrives within a defined cluster of comparable announcements from American AI companies. In April, Anthropic said it is expanding its presence in London with new office space for 800 people, days after rival OpenAI unveiled plans for its first permanent office in the UK capital. Google also plans to move employees into a new UK headquarters this summer.

 

Runway is not the first Nvidia-backed AI company to anchor a European expansion in London. In December 2025, Nvidia-backed video generation startup Luma AI announced plans to establish a major presence in London, with plans to hire approximately 200 employees — representing around 40% of its projected workforce — at its new London base by early 2027, across research, engineering, partnerships and strategic development.

 

Luma AI chief executive Vishal Jain told CNBC that the UK was the starting point of that expansion because of its access to talent, citing London's proximity to research institutions including DeepMind. The pattern across both Runway and Luma AI reflects Nvidia's investment positioning and a sustained UK government effort to attract AI laboratories to the country.

 

Investment Breakdown and Hiring Figures Remain Undisclosed

 

Runway has not detailed how the $200 million commitment breaks down, how many people it intends to hire, or over what schedule beyond the 2028 marker. The company said it expects to expand further across Europe in due course. The firm has publicly named a city, a cumulative investment figure and a deadline, while leaving the structural specifics of the deployment unreported at the time of the announcement.