⚡ AI Snapshot
- Co-Star founder becomes Midjourney's chief design officer
- Deal reportedly closed in spring, terms undisclosed
- Team will build Midjourney's first native apps
The update
Midjourney has acquired Co-Star, the free personalized astrology app, in a deal that reportedly closed in spring. Terms weren't disclosed. Co-Star founder Banu Guler will stay in charge of the app while also becoming Midjourney's chief design officer, and her team will help build Midjourney's first standalone apps, starting with one for image generation.
Under the hood
Co-Star bills itself as a mix of human insight, NASA data, and AI, delivering daily horoscopes and friend-compatibility checks. What Midjourney is buying isn't the astrology — it's a team that turned a hyper-online concept into a clean, sticky consumer app that people actually open every day. Holz says Guler and her crew will help build Midjourney's first dedicated apps, including one for image generation.
The signal
Read literally, this is a strange pairing — image models meet star charts. Read correctly, it's a design hire dressed up as an acquisition. Midjourney still lives on the web and inside Discord, which is fine for power users and hostile to everyone else. Buying the team behind one of the most recognizable AI-flavored consumer apps is Midjourney admitting its next problem isn't the model, it's the product.
The backstory
Midjourney has been on an odd tear, moving from cat images to full-body ultrasound scans, with its core product still gated behind Discord commands and a web interface. The company has never shipped a native app of its own. Hiring a proven consumer-app founder as chief design officer is the clearest signal yet that phase is ending.
Who it's for
- Designers
- Signal Midjourney is finally prioritizing polished UX
- Founders
- An acqui-hire framed as a product acquisition
The catch
The deal terms are undisclosed, so we don't know what Midjourney paid or how big Co-Star's team is. There's also no ship date, no details, and no confirmed feature set for the image app — just a stated intention. Whether Co-Star's design instincts translate to a creative tool is entirely unproven.
What to watch
Watch for Midjourney's first native app, the image generator Holz flagged, and how much Guler's design sensibility shows up in it. The open question is whether Co-Star keeps running as-is or becomes a testbed for Midjourney's models.
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