Today, we're announcing an enterprise partnership with MIXI, one of Japan's leading technology and entertainment companies. MIXI has deployed Runway across creative operations, spanning sports, lifestyle and digital entertainment. Going forward, MIXI and Runway plan to collaborate on new creative use cases and explore emerging applications across gaming, animation and interactive experiences.
MIXI is best known for Monster Strike, a mobile game that has run for over 10 years and has amassed more than 65 million users globally, spawning related media such as anime. They are also known for FamilyAlbum, a family photo-sharing platform with more than 30 million users. The company has deployed Runway across its major business units, with significant cost and time savings:
- A video production for the Traditional Chinese version of Monster Strike that would previously have required 21 days was completed in just three days, entirely in-house.
- A brand film that would have taken 20 days with traditional tools was produced in seven, with a hybrid creative pipeline combining live action and generative video.
- Visual proposals for character animations, in-app effects and screen transitions can now be created in as little as five minutes, compared with a process that previously took several days.
"At MIXI, we believe in our tagline: 'Connection with meaning,' or kokoro mo tsunagou in Japanese. Our products live in the space between people. Runway now sits at the heart of our creative production workflow, supporting how we make the experiences we ship across games, sports, lifestyle and entertainment. As AI makes production abundant, what becomes scarce is direction, point of view and the stories worth telling. More of those stories will make it out into the world. Nothing excites us more than the new ground we get to open up together with Runway," said Tatsuma Murase, Director and Senior Executive Officer at MIXI, Inc.
"MIXI is a perfect example of what we see in just about every successful enterprise deployment: find an initial, specific use case, prove success and expand rapidly. The speed at which many creators across MIXI’s businesses have adopted Runway is incredible," said Cristóbal Valenzuela, co-founder and co-CEO of Runway. "As one of our earliest partners in Japan, it’s exciting to see Runway used at scale in such a wide variety of ways.”
This partnership comes on the back of our recent expansion in Japan: opening a Tokyo office as our Japan headquarters, committing an initial $40M to build our presence in the country and hiring a Head of Japan to lead the effort. Japan has been one of our fastest-growing markets, even without a major commercial presence – it’s our third-largest market among both enterprise and self-serve customers, and the fastest-growing self-serve market in Asia. In addition to millions of individual users, we’ve seen 300% growth in enterprise customers in the past 12 months, and Japan has driven a third of our sales volume in Asia overall. Much of this growth is powered by early partners like MIXI, as well as enterprises like Yamaha, SoftBank Corp. and NHN PlayArt.
For information about career opportunities at our Tokyo office, see here. Japanese enterprises looking to get started with Runway can learn more here.
