AI-video startups valued at billions of dollars — who leads the market

Higgsfield, Runway, Luma AI, and Synthesia — we analyze how independent AI video startups reached valuations of billions of dollars by 2026 and who might become the next unicorn.

The generative AI video market experienced a sharp turnaround over the past year. In spring 2026, OpenAI shut down the Sora app amid computing costs that far exceeded revenue. At the same time, Runway shifted its strategic focus from video generation to “world models.” Independent startups filled the void, going from unicorns to companies valued at several billion dollars in just a few months. We examine who is currently shaping this market and how they make money.

Higgsfield — the fastest growth in the industry

Higgsfield became the main news story of summer 2026. The company raised $400 million in a Series B round, raising its valuation to $5.4 billion — a fourfold increase in eight months. The round was led by DST Global, with participation from Tribe Capital, Goldman Sachs Alternatives Growth, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall, Valor Capital, and Intel Capital.

For comparison, Higgsfield’s valuation was only $1.3 billion in January 2026. The company was founded in 2023 by Alex Mashrabov, former head of generative AI at Snap, who had previously sold his startup AI Factory to Snap for $166 million.

The key driver of growth was a sharp pivot toward corporate clients. If business clients accounted for less than 25% of Higgsfield’s revenue at the beginning of 2026, they became the main source by August. As of August, the company’s annual revenue reached $700 million with 30 million users in 200 countries, and the service is used by 390 companies from the Fortune 500 list.

However, the company faces reputational risks — in February 2026, it was revealed that Higgsfield’s marketing team sent influencers advertising materials featuring racist AI-generated content, including animated characters from children’s movies with racist insults. More details about the company’s products — including a full-length film entirely generated by neural networks and shown at Cannes — can be found in The Tech article.

Runway — from editing tool to “world models”

In February 2026, Runway raised $315 million in a Series E round, nearly doubling its valuation to $5.3 billion. The round was led by General Atlantic, with participation from Nvidia, Adobe Ventures, AMD Ventures, Fidelity Management, and Felicis Ventures — bringing total funding raised since 2018 to $860 million.

The startup was founded in New York by three graduates of NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program: Cristobal Valenzuela, Alejandro Matamala-Ortiz, and Anastasis Germanidis. Initially, Runway helped film editors with rotoscoping and inpainting, but in December 2025, the company released its first “world model,” GWM-1, and now considers this direction key for medicine, climate research, energy, and robotics.

According to one of the founders, the company added $40 million in annual recurring revenue in the second quarter of 2026, and its models are used by virtually every major film studio. Runway remains one of the tools mentioned in The Tech’s list of the best neural networks for video generation.

Luma AI — betting on a supercomputer in Saudi Arabia

In November 2025, Luma AI raised $900 million in a round led by Humain, a subsidiary of the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, bringing the company’s valuation to over $4 billion. Participation in the round also came from AMD Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Amplify Partners, and Matrix Partners.

The deal’s uniqueness lies not only in the money but also in infrastructure. Luma and Humain agreed to build a 2-gigawatt supercluster, Project Halo, in Saudi Arabia, designed to train models capable of understanding and simulating physical reality.

The company was founded in Palo Alto in 2021 by Amit Jain, Alex Yu, and Alberto Tieutti. The company’s flagship model, Ray3, released in September 2025, reportedly outperforms OpenAI’s Sora 2 in benchmarks and is roughly on par with Google’s Veo 3. In addition to infrastructure ambitions, Luma AI also announced plans to open an office in London with 200 employees by early 2027 — about 40% of the company’s entire team.

Synthesia — the only leader that declined Adobe’s money

Unlike Higgsfield, Runway, and Luma AI, London-based Synthesia was initially built around the corporate segment rather than cinematic generation. In January 2026, the company closed a $200 million Series E round at a $4 billion valuation — the round was led by Google Ventures, with participation from NVentures (Nvidia’s venture arm), Accel, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, PSP Growth, Air Street Capital, and other existing investors.

A year earlier, in January 2025, the company’s valuation was $2.1 billion after a $180 million Series D round. Notably, in 2025, Synthesia rejected Adobe’s acquisition offer of $3 billion — the parties could not agree on the price.

The company was founded in 2017 by Victor Riparbelli, Steffen Thierfelder, UCL professor Lourdes Agapito, and Matthias Nießner — the co-founders of Synthesia bet on human 3D capture technology from 2D images from the start, making cheap AI video generation possible. The bet on enterprise paid off — over 90% of companies on the Fortune 100 list now use the platform, including Bosch, SAP, Merck, Xerox, and Heineken.

Who is one step away from a billion-dollar valuation

HeyGen, a competitor to Synthesia focused on small and medium-sized businesses rather than large corporations, is closest to achieving unicorn status. In June 2026, the company exceeded $200 million in annual recurring revenue, doubling the figure in eight months, with a base of over 30 million users in 196 countries and 118 million videos created.

However, HeyGen’s last official round was a $60 million Series A in 2024 at a $500 million valuation, with investors including Benchmark, Bond Capital, and Thrive Capital. The company emphasizes capital efficiency — it generates about $2.70 of annual revenue for every dollar of capital raised, higher than Zoom and Datadog at the time of their IPOs, and remains cash-positive, having spent only about a third of the $74 million raised. Formally, HeyGen remains outside the club of billion-dollar startups, but its revenue growth rate outpaces most competitors.

The Chinese front: another race for the same spot

Western startups compete not only with each other. Chinese companies — Kuaishou with its Kling model and ByteDance with Seedance — are developing their own video models that outperform Western players in several benchmarks.