Generative Video at the Speed of Light — Keegan McCallum, uRun
uRun's Helios model generates video at 1/100th the cost of frontier models with comparable quality
“at least 40 models with real-time capabilities and long horizon generation capabilities released this year”
uRun founder Keegan McCallum presented Helios, a distilled video generation model (from Juan 2.1 14B) that produces output at roughly 1/100th the cost of last year's frontier models at comparable quality. The broader argument is that the generative video space is rapidly improving along an efficiency axis — not just quality — with at least 40 models gaining real-time and long-horizon capabilities in 2025 alone. This signals an emerging commoditization of video inference that could unlock interactive and real-time media applications at scale.