Cristóbal Valenzuela is the co-founder and co-CEO of Runway. He was born and raised in Santiago, Chile, and moved from an economics undergraduate background into film and then software. He is a graduate of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where in 2016 he met his fellow Runway co-founders Anastasis Germanidis and Alejandro Matamala Ortiz. He is a new father.
Identity and culture
Valenzuela is associated with Runway's anti-Silicon-Valley positioning, which he has described as a rejection of inherited industry conventions:
"Rules are just rules they invented. That's a driving force of how we do things at Runway. They say Silicon Valley is here and that's where the startups are. Why? Those are just made-up rules. Scrub them all and start again."
He spends free time reading Nicanor Parra, the Chilean poet who positioned poetry as belonging to the people rather than to rules. (Source: TechCrunch, May 15, 2026)
Strategic positioning
Where Germanidis is associated with Runway's world-models thesis, Valenzuela has emphasized economic discipline, arguing that Runway's lack of Bay Area capital insulation forced revenue-first thinking earlier than peers. He has framed this against the position that many video-AI competitors raised more capital than they could deploy productively, citing Sora's $1 million per day burn rate before its shutdown. (Source: TechCrunch, May 15, 2026)
Relationships
- co-founded: Runway
- co-CEO with: Anastasis Germanidis
- related: World Models, Runway Started by Helping Filmmakers — Now It Wants to Beat Google at AI (Bellan, TechCrunch, May 2026)