Midjourney Acquires Astrology App Co-Star in First Move Toward a Consumer App Empire

Midjourney, the AI lab best known for its image and video generators, has acquired the social astrology app Co-Star. The deal was completed earlier in the spring according to Bloomberg, but only announced publicly on Thursday. Financial terms were not disclosed by either party. Co-Star, founded in 2017, uses AI to generate personalized horoscopes and astrological advice, and TechCrunch reports it has roughly 4.3 million monthly active users.

The acquisition marks Midjourney's first purchase of another company. Until now, the bootstrapped startup had grown entirely through its own product revenue, famously avoiding venture capital. Buying a consumer app with an established user base signals a sharp pivot from being purely a tool provider to becoming a consumer platform operator.

Midjourney's interest in Co-Star goes beyond the app itself. The company is bringing Co-Star's founder, Banu Guler, in-house to lead product design for a new suite of standalone applications. According to Bloomberg, Midjourney is already building its first consumer app, a standalone image-generation tool that will operate independently from the Discord-based interface users currently rely on.

Co-Star built its reputation on AI-generated, hyper-personalized daily notifications that blend astrological data with natural language generation. That expertise in turning AI output into sticky, daily consumer habits is directly applicable to what Midjourney wants to do next. The Verge notes that Midjourney has already expanded from generating cat images to full-body ultrasound scans, and this acquisition extends that diversification into the consumer software market.

Multiple sources frame this as much a talent deal as a product acquisition. Banu Guler, Co-Star's co-founder and CEO, has joined Midjourney's leadership team. Digg reports she will take on a design chief role, shaping the user experience of Midjourney's forthcoming apps. Co-Star's engineering and design team is also expected to contribute to Midjourney's consumer product efforts.

This is a familiar playbook in tech: acquire a smaller company primarily to bring its founder and team aboard. But unlike many acqui-hires where the acquired product gets shut down, Co-Star will continue operating. Midjourney's announcement says the astrology app will remain available, and its existing user base will not be disrupted. The dual-track approach lets Midjourney learn from a live consumer product while building its own apps in parallel.

Midjourney has taken an unusual route among AI labs. While competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic raised billions in venture funding, Midjourney remained bootstrapped, funding operations entirely through subscription revenue from its image-generation products. Unite emphasizes this context, noting that the Co-Star acquisition was self-funded from Midjourney's own profits rather than investor capital.

The company generated significant revenue from its Discord-based image generator, which became one of the most popular AI creative tools. That financial independence gives Midjourney freedom to make unconventional bets, like buying an astrology app, without needing to justify the move to venture capitalists. Startupfortune frames the acquisition as seeding what could become a consumer app empire built on Midjourney's underlying AI models.

Bloomberg reports that Midjourney's first standalone application will be an image-generation tool, breaking free from the Discord server that has been its only interface since launch. This is a significant product shift. Discord served as a clever distribution channel, but it limited Midjourney's reach to users comfortable with that platform. A dedicated app opens the product to a mainstream audience.

Techmeme adds that the app will incorporate the personalization techniques Co-Star pioneered, tailoring the image-generation experience to individual users rather than offering a one-size-fits-all tool. The combination of Midjourney's image models with Co-Star's approach to daily personalized content suggests the company is aiming for a product that users engage with regularly, not just when they need a specific image.

The acquisition points to a broader trend: AI labs are moving from infrastructure and developer tools toward direct consumer applications. Midjourney buying a lifestyle app rather than another AI tool company indicates the market sees value in distribution channels and user habits, not just model capabilities. Co-Star's 4.3 million monthly users represent a built-in audience that already trusts AI-generated personal content.

For the astrology app's users, nothing changes immediately. But the long-term implication is that Midjourney's models could eventually power more of Co-Star's content, potentially making horoscopes more visually rich or interactive. For the AI industry, the deal raises the question of whether other labs will pursue similar consumer acquisitions to bypass the slow process of building audiences from scratch.

Midjourney has not announced a release date for its standalone image-generation app. The company is integrating Co-Star's team and presumably adapting the astrology app's personalization engine for visual content. Co-Star continues to operate independently while its founder splits time between the two products.

Bloomberg reports that Midjourney views this as the first step in building a suite of consumer applications, suggesting more product launches will follow. Whether those future apps stay within creative tools or branch into the lifestyle and wellness space that Co-Star occupies remains an open question. The company's bootstrapped model means it can move at its own pace without external pressure to ship on a venture timeline.