Midjourney's Radical Pivot: From AI Images to Ultrasound Machines and Astrology Apps

Midjourney Pivots to Ultrasound Machines and Astrology Apps

Midjourney built its following on text-to-image generation. Now it is buying an astrology app, building standalone consumer apps, and developing a full-body ultrasound machine for medical spas. The company that charges $10 to $120 a month for AI-generated images and video 1 is betting those capabilities extend to regulated medical hardware and horoscopes.

CEO David Holz announced the acquisition of Co-Star, the popular astrology app, alongside plans for standalone consumer apps 2. Holz also unveiled the Midjourney Scanner, a device he described as a "full-body ultrasound machine" and the flagship product of Midjourney Medical, a new division 1.

Holz claimed no such device has been built before and said the company aims to produce a fleet of 50,000 scanners 1. He declined to name a price. The machines require users to be partially submerged in water and will launch in "Midjourney Spa" locations, starting with a 25,000-square-foot space in San Francisco featuring hot tubs, saunas, cold plunges, and a gym 1.

The ultrasound is one of eight projects underway at Midjourney, split evenly between hardware and software. Holz said the company expects to ship at least two hardware products soon 1.

The product roadmap across astrology apps, consumer software, and medical hardware suggests a thesis: that generative AI is a general-purpose capability layer. The details complicate it.

The ultrasound machine does not currently use AI. Holz told the audience that the device relies on hardware and software engineering rather than machine learning models 1. A company whose brand is generative AI is entering medical hardware without its core technology as the differentiator.

The scanner will need FDA clearance. Holz described an incremental strategy: start with straightforward approvals, then add diagnostic capabilities over time, aiming for a device that can eventually perform thousands of types of diagnoses. He also suggested the machines could become therapeutic within a decade 1. For a company with no track record in medical devices, each of those diagnostic capabilities is a separate regulatory approval to win.

The Co-Star acquisition operates on different logic. Astrology apps succeed on cultural resonance and user engagement, not on model sophistication. Buying Co-Star gives Midjourney an audience in a consumer category disconnected from image generation, and it is unclear what generative AI adds to daily horoscopes that users would notice or pay for.

All of this unfolds against legal pressure. Midjourney faces lawsuits from content owners including Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. and Walt Disney Co., who allege that their well-known characters have appeared in Midjourney's generated images and videos 1. Copyright litigation that narrows what the models can produce threatens the subscription revenue funding every other initiative. Expanding into hardware and consumer apps could be a hedge against that risk, or it could split attention from the legal fight that determines whether the core business survives.

For builders and investors, the implications are concrete. If Midjourney can generalize across these categories, it validates the idea that an AI company's boundary is limited only by the markets it chooses to enter. If it cannot, Midjourney is an image-generation service spreading into spas and horoscopes while copyright cases erode its foundation.

The roadmap is eight projects deep. The company has signed a lease for the first spa. Holz says the designs are ready 1. Whether any of it clears the FDA, survives the courts, or finds a paying audience will determine whether this was a coherent vision or an image company reaching past its grasp.