Edwin Toh

Design Engineer @ RunwayML - Leading Workflows / Ex-Googler on Workspace / Labs / Research / Search. Equal left and right brainer

[Edwin Toh @edtoh]

Really excited to announce the launch of Workflows for our CPP and Enterprise Runway customers.

Workflows was shaped by listening closely to our customers’ pain points, and by our desire to empower them to do what they do best: create.

This was a massive project — designed and built by an incredibly dedicated, smart, and hardworking team that I’m grateful to work with! Let's go!

[Runway @runwayml]

Introducing Workflows, a new way to build your own tools inside of Runway.

Now you can create your own custom node-based workflows chaining together multiple models, modalities and intermediary steps for even more control of your generations. Build the Workflows that work for you.

Available now for our Creative Partners and Enterprise customers. Coming soon to all plans.

[Edwin Toh @edtoh]

Watching how developers use AI is a useful signal for where other creative fields — like design — are headed. The shift is already happening: people are becoming reviewers and verifiers more than makers. The interesting design challenge now is how to build systems that support that evolving role, while still encouraging deliberate thinking rather than blind delegation to a model. Whoever solves that well might just be building the next big thing.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Perplexity just casually rebuilt Mint.

Mint died in March 2024 after 15 years because Plaid's data fees made every free user unprofitable. Intuit dumped 3.6 million users onto Credit Karma, which didn't even have budgeting.

Now Perplexity connects the same Plaid APIs, pulls the same transaction data, and offers the same spending tracking. The math works this time because nobody's signing up for Perplexity to budget. They're signing up for search. Finance is a retention feature on a $20/month subscription, not a standalone product bleeding money on every API call.

That's the structural reason AI companies keep eating vertical SaaS. The AI product already has the user and the subscription. Adding a vertical costs one Plaid integration. Building the vertical from scratch costs acquiring millions of users who won't pay.

Mint spent 15 years trying to make personal finance a business. Perplexity made it a Tuesday afternoon feature launch.

[Runway @runwayml]

https://t.co/HjiN5F7bVG

[Cheng Lou @_chenglou]

My dear front-end developers (and anyone who’s interested in the future of interfaces):

I have crawled through depths of hell to bring you, for the foreseeable years, one of the more important foundational pieces of UI engineering (if not in implementation then certainly at least in concept):
Fast, accurate and comprehensive userland text measurement algorithm in pure TypeScript, usable for laying out entire web pages without CSS, bypassing DOM measurements and reflow

[Cristóbal Valenzuela @c_valenzuelab]

Last week we debuted our new real-time video agents with one of the hardest demos possible: live television. The BBC is now using Runway Characters to augment segments of their programming. Wild to see this live. So excited for all the new possible applications to come.

[Edwin Toh @edtoh]

Excited to be building out a team at Runway Labs with @matamalaortiz. If you're a design engineer and/or is someone with an interest in generative media/world models, DM me for a chat :)

[Alejandro Matamala Ortiz @matamalaortiz]

Building new products and applications has completely changed. Today, more than ever, it is crucial to ask ourselves what the next generation of applications for generative video will be, how we are building them, and how this will impact every single industry.

I’m very excited to start Runway Labs, an internal incubator dedicated to exploring new products at the frontier of generative video and General World Models. We are at a very special moment in time to define how this future will look.

I’m hiring an initial team to build with: design engineers, AI engineers, and builders who want to create new kinds of experiences and products that haven’t been possible before. If this sounds interesting to you, reach out.

[Runway @runwayml]

Today we are introducing Runway Labs, a generative AI incubator led by our co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, Alejandro Matamala Ortiz.

Runway Labs will focus on broadly exploring the transformative power of AI video and General Worlds Models across all industries. From film and television to healthcare and education, gaming, advertising, real estate and more. We will be partnering with creators, enterprises, institutions and foundations to find new applications for these technologies and opportunities across industries.

Learn more at the link below.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Dario Amodei just gave his first interview since the Pentagon blacklisted his company. The toll is visible on his face.

He was asked one question. What would you say to the President right now?

He didn’t hesitate.

Amodei: “We are patriotic Americans. Everything we have done has been for the sake of this country.”

Anthropic built their models to defend America. They were the first AI lab cleared for classified military systems. They wanted to help the warfighter.

But the Pentagon demanded unrestricted access to fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of American citizens.

Amodei drew the line.

The government responded with emergency Cold War powers. A supply chain designation normally reserved for foreign adversaries. A six-month federal phaseout ordered from Truth Social.

Amodei: “When we were threatened with supply chain designation and Defense Production Act, which are unprecedented intrusions into the private economy, we exercised our classic First Amendment rights to speak up and disagree with the government.”

The administration framed Anthropic’s refusal as anti-American.

Amodei’s response dismantled that framing in one sentence.

Amodei: “Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world.”

Here is the deeper paradox nobody in Washington wants to say out loud.

We are in a geopolitical race against autocratic adversaries who use AI for mass surveillance of their own citizens and autonomous weapons with no human oversight.

The Pentagon demanded that Anthropic build those exact capabilities for America.

Amodei: “The red lines we have drawn, we drew because we believe that crossing those red lines is contrary to American values.”

You cannot defeat authoritarianism by adopting its methods.

You cannot defend the open society by forcing private companies to build its antithesis under threat of wartime emergency powers.

Anthropic held the line. Got blacklisted for it. And came out the other side saying the same thing they said going in.

That is what it actually looks like to mean it.

[Runway @runwayml]

World models are the most transformative technology of our time. Our mission at Runway is to accelerate their development and ensure they have a positive impact on the world. Today we're announcing $315 million in Series E funding to help advance this work.

Learn more at the link below.

[Michelle Kwon @MiSunKw]

@runwayml is the world's leading enterprise platform for AI-powered video and multi-media content creation with tens of millions of users and trusted by Fortune 100 companies around the globe.

Our Series E is a lagging indicator of the work we've been doing to pre-train the next generation of world models, and bring them to new products and industries.

Join us in bringing the most consequential technology of our time to companies and users at scale: https://t.co/H4eqHj0hym.

[Edwin Toh @edtoh]

@nlevin Dang. Was hopeful song to sleep would work well! Will give it a try anyway and report back.

[Edwin Toh @edtoh]

Sharing a personal update: I recently trained a milk-to-poop model with my partner and have been spending my days and nights dealing with the output. Training continues to more modalities next: hoping to get song-to-sleep working next soon.

[Chris Olah @ch402]

I try to not talk about politics. I generally believe the best way I can serve the world is as a non-partisan expert, and my genuine beliefs are quite moderate. So the bar is very high for me to comment.

But recent events – a federal agent killing an ICU nurse for seemingly no reason and with no provocation – shock the conscience.

My deep loyalty is to the principles of classical liberal democracy: freedom of speech, the rule of law, the dignity of the human person. I immigrated to the United States – and eventually cofounded Anthropic here – believing it was a pillar of these principles.

I feel very sad today.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.

[Jeff Dean @JeffDean]

This is absolutely shameful. Agents of a federal agency unnecessarily escalating, and then executing a defenseless citizen whose offense appears to be using his cell phone camera. Every person regardless of political affiliation should be denouncing this.

[Runway @runwayml]

Introducing Image to Video for Gen-4.5, the world's best video model.

Built for longer stories. Precise camera control. Coherent narratives. And characters that stay consistent.

Gen-4.5 Image to Video is available now for all paid plans.

[Runway @runwayml]

We're thrilled to have partnered with @nvidia to bring Gen-4.5 to Vera Rubin - the first video generation model to run on NVIDIA's most advanced accelerator, ahead of its release.

"Video generation and world models are ushering in a new era of AI, one that understands and simulates the physical world....Vera Rubin was architected from the ground up for these demanding workloads, and Runway's rapid integration of Gen-4.5 shows our platform is ready to power the next generation of creative and physical AI."

- Richard Kerris, Vice President and General Manager of Media at NVIDIA

Learn more at the link below.

[🍥 Timmy 🍥 @IXITimmyIXI]

Gen-4.5 Prompt share!

Add this style prompt to generate the perfect Claymation clip:

Handcrafted stop-motion clay animation aesthetic with sculpted figures made from matte clay, showing visible fingerprint impressions, seams, and subtle surface imperfections. Forms feel solid and tactile, with slight asymmetry typical of handmade models. Practical, studio-style lighting casts soft, directional shadows that emphasize volume, depth, and physical presence without harsh highlights. The image has a gentle analog film texture with fine grain and mild softness, evoking traditional stop-motion photography rather than digital rendering. Motion feels incremental and grounded, with a handcrafted cadence that preserves form consistency frame to frame and avoids fluid interpolation. The overall look emphasizes real materials, physical construction, and intentional imperfection, creating a warm, tangible, high-quality claymation aesthetic.

[Edwin Toh @edtoh]

My personal 2nd favorite is this one. Being able to immerse yourself in a picture is going to be insane!

[Runway @runwayml]

Our third announcement is GWM Worlds. A world model for real-time environment simulation.

You give the model a static scene, and it generates an immersive, infinite, explorable space as you move through it, with geometry, lighting and physics. All in real-time. You can travel to any place, real or imagined. You can become any agent, a person walking through a city, a drone flying over a snowy mountain or a robot navigating a warehouse.

[Edwin Toh @edtoh]

GWM Avatars is the most fun and exciting announcement from today. I remember seeing it internally some time back and it brought a smile to my face. I think it will bring smiles to yours too when you try it out 😁

Kudos to the team behind it!

[Runway @runwayml]

GWM-1 can simulate environments, physics and motion. But one of the most complex things to simulate is human behavior – the way people look, move and respond in conversation in a way that feels natural and immersive. This is really difficult to get right.

We believe we’ve improved on this significantly with our fourth announcement - GWM Avatars.

GWM Avatars is an audio-driven interactive video generation model that simulates natural human motion and expression for arbitrary photorealistic or stylized characters.