Midjourney’s Co-Star deal shows its AI ambitions are moving beyond Discord

Midjourney’s Co-Star deal shows its AI ambitions are moving beyond Discord
Midjourney’s acquisition of astrology app Co-Star looks, at first glance, like an odd pairing. But the deal points to a more practical shift: the image-generation company appears to be using Co-Star’s consumer app expertise to help build products beyond the Discord-first experience that made Midjourney famous.

The basic facts are not in dispute. Midjourney has acquired Co-Star, the personalized astrology app with roughly 4.3 million monthly active users, and the financial terms have not been disclosed. Co-Star’s roughly two dozen employees are joining Midjourney as part of the transaction, giving the AI company a team with experience building and running a mass-market mobile product.

From one angle, the acquisition broadens Midjourney’s already eclectic ambitions. TechCrunch frames it as the latest sign that the company is stretching well beyond image and video generation, noting that Midjourney has explored projects in areas as varied as medicine, spas, and now astrology. In that reading, Co-Star is another unconventional bet from a company that has shown little interest in staying in a single lane.

From another angle, the logic is more straightforward. The Verge reports that Co-Star founder Banu Guler will remain in charge of the app while also becoming Midjourney’s chief design officer, where she and her team will help develop Midjourney’s first apps, including one focused on image generation. That matters because Midjourney still primarily operates on the web and through Discord, rather than through its own flagship standalone app.

Co-Star itself also sits at an intersection that may appeal to Midjourney: it blends “human insight, data from NASA, and AI” to deliver personalized daily advice. Whether this becomes a quirky side acquisition or the foundation for Midjourney’s next consumer push will depend on what those first apps actually look like.

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