Midjourney Buys the Astrology App Co-Star

Midjourney, which started out generating images of kitties and later wowed audiences with its striking “body scans,” announced on Thursday that it had bought the personalized astrology app Co-Star. The deal was first reported by Bloomberg.

Co-Star is a free app that sends users daily horoscopes and lets them check their compatibility with friends. According to the service's own FAQ section, its forecasts are built on a blend of human interpretation, NASA data and artificial intelligence. The terms of the deal, which by all accounts closed back in the spring, have not been disclosed.

The founder stays at the helm

Midjourney founder David Holz said that Co-Star's creator, Banu Guler, will retain leadership of the app. At the same time, she will take on a new role at Midjourney — head of design. According to Holz, Guler and her team will help the startup build its first full-fledged apps, including a standalone image-generation app. For now, Midjourney's models are only available through a web interface and Discord.

The acquisition looks like a logical continuation of Midjourney's trademark unpredictability: a company whose directions (from cute animals to medical-looking scans) have repeatedly left observers baffled is now officially getting into predicting the future. Behind the exotic façade, however, lies a perfectly pragmatic calculation — the startup needs product and design specialists in order to finally ship its own apps rather than rely on third-party platforms.

Source: The Verge