Wait, Midjourney Did What Now?
Midjourney — the company that made a fortune turning text prompts into moody, ethereal images — just bought an astrology app. Yes, astrology. The kind with star signs, horoscopes, and "Mercury in retrograde" notifications. The AI startup announced on Thursday that it has acquired Co-Star, the popular personalized astrology platform, in a deal whose financial terms remain undisclosed but reportedly closed back in spring.
Let that sink in for a moment. A company at the bleeding edge of generative AI is now in the business of telling you whether your Gemini sun sign is compatible with your boss's Scorpio moon rising. This isn't a joke — it's an actual corporate acquisition.
What's Really Going On Here?
On the surface, this looks like a pure talent grab. Co-Star founder Banu Guler will keep running her astrology app while simultaneously taking on the role of Midjourney's Chief Design Officer. Bloomberg reports that Guler and her team will help Midjourney build its first dedicated apps — including a proper image generation app to escape the company's current reliance on Discord and its web interface.
So the official story is: Midjourney bought design talent wrapped in an astrology wrapper. And sure, Co-Star has a sleek UI and a devoted following. But let's be honest — this is the same company that recently pivoted into full-body ultrasound scanners. Midjourney's strategy is starting to look less like a coherent vision and more like a billionaire's whim-driven shopping spree.
Three Questions Nobody's Asking
- What does astrology have to do with AI imaging? The Venn diagram of zodiac horoscopes and diffusion models has approximately zero overlap. Unless Midjourney plans to generate your birth chart as an oil painting — which, frankly, someone's probably already doing on the platform — this acquisition makes sense only as a headcount move.
- Is this really the best use of investor capital? Midjourney operates in one of the most capital-intensive corners of tech. AI model training, GPU clusters, and researcher salaries don't come cheap. Spending acquisition dollars on an app whose core offering is pseudoscientific personality readings is a curious allocation of resources when competitors are racing toward AGI.
- Who actually benefits? Co-Star users get to keep their horoscopes. Midjourney gets a design lead. But does this move the needle for anyone building serious AI applications? Probably not.
The Deeper Pattern: AI's Identity Crisis
This acquisition is symptomatic of something broader happening across the AI industry. Companies flush with cash and uncertain about their long-term product strategy are buying anything that looks like it has "engagement." Midjourney has a wildly popular image generation model but no real app ecosystem. Co-Star has a sticky consumer product but no clear AI differentiation beyond a generic "AI-powered" tagline on its FAQ page.
Put them together and what do you get? A company that generates art and tells you your horoscope. That's not a platform. That's a bundle of separate hobbies.
The skeptical take is this: Midjourney is buying time — and design talent — while it figures out what it actually wants to be when it grows up. Co-Star's app-building experience is the real prize here, not the astrology database. The zodiac stuff is just the wrapping paper.
But in an industry where every move is scrutinized for signals about the future of AI, buying a horoscope app sends a strange message. It says: we're making this up as we go along. And maybe that's the most honest thing any AI company has done all year.
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