Designing the Visual World with AI: The Journey of Anastasis Germanidis

Anastasis Germanidis is one of the most influential figures shaping the intersection of artificial intelligence, creativity, and simulated visual worlds. A Greek AI researcher, software engineer, and artist based in New York, Anastasis has helped redefine how machines collaborate with human imagination and how intelligent systems are beginning to understand, generate, and simulate the visual world far beyond traditional filmmaking.

Born in Greece and educated across both technical and creative disciplines, Anastasis built a rare profile that bridges rigorous engineering with artistic exploration. He studied Computer Science at Wesleyan University, before completing a Master’s degree at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), focusing on human computer interaction and creative technologies. This dual foundation would become the defining force of his career.

Before founding Runway, Anastasis worked as a backend engineer at Quantcast, Chartbeat, and Zocdoc, and as a Machine Learning Researcher in Computer Vision at IBM Research. These experiences grounded him in large scale systems, data infrastructure, and applied machine learning, while his artistic background pushed him to explore a deeper question: what happens when AI systems don’t just assist creativity, but begin to model and reason about visual reality itself?

In 2018, Anastasis co founded Runway, an applied AI research company, and has served as its Co Founder and Chief Technology Officer ever since. From the outset, he has shaped the company’s technical vision and research direction, guiding the development of multimodal models that learn how visual worlds look, move, and behave, and enabling new forms of creation, simulation, and interaction.

Under his technical leadership, Runway pioneered machine learning powered video, image, and world building systems that dramatically reduced production time while expanding creative possibility. Its models have been used across film, television, advertising, music, and experimental media, including award winning productions, while also laying the groundwork for persistent environments, coherent motion, and performance driven visual systems.

Beyond products, Anastasis has emerged as a key voice in global conversations around AI and creativity. As artificial intelligence entered the core of visual culture and entertainment, his work positioned Runway at the center of both innovation and debate, navigating questions around authorship, labor, ethics, and the future relationship between humans and intelligent systems.

Today, Anastasis Germanidis stands at the forefront of a historic shift: one where artificial intelligence does not replace creativity, but extends it into new dimensions, enabling creators to design, simulate, and explore visual worlds that were previously impossible. His work reflects a rare combination of technical depth, creative intuition, and long term vision, helping define how humans and machines will imagine, build, and experience the worlds of the future.