Midjourney bought the astrology app Co-Star
Midjourney has acquired personalized astrology app Co-Star, with founder Banu Guler becoming chief design officer and helping build Midjourney's first standalone apps.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Midjourney, known for AI image generation, is acquiring astrology app Co-Star to gain both a consumer product and design talent. Founder Banu Guler will lead Co-Star and serve as Midjourney's chief design officer as the company builds its first native apps.
Midjourney makes pictures from words, and it just bought an app that tells people their horoscope every day. The person who made that astrology app is now also helping Midjourney design its own phone apps, because right now most people only use Midjourney inside a chat app called Discord.
Analysis
From Cat Pictures to Consumer Products
Midjourney started as a Discord-native experiment that turned text prompts into AI-generated images, and the brand's early reputation was forged on surreal cat photos and dreamy landscapes. Years later, the company is publicly exploring far more ambitious territory, including full-body ultrasound scans generated from text prompts, which underscores how far the underlying model has come. Acquiring Co-Star marks a different kind of leap: rather than extending what the model can do, Midjourney is acquiring a finished consumer product with a paying, engaged user base. That audience is small compared with mainstream social apps, but it is unusually loyal, and the daily ritual of opening a horoscope app is exactly the kind of habit loop a generative AI company might envy.
Why Co-Star Specifically
Co-Star is not a typical horoscope app. According to its own FAQ, it combines human-written interpretation, NASA data, and machine learning to deliver personalized readings, and its visual identity is one of the most recognizable in the wellness-and-astrology category. That combination of data-driven personalization and a strong design language is precisely what Midjourney has been criticized for lacking in its own consumer surfaces. Founder David Holz told Bloomberg that Co-Star's founder Banu Guler will stay in charge of the app while also becoming Midjourney's chief design officer, a role the company did not previously have. Bringing in a designer who has shipped a beloved consumer product is a clear acknowledgement that Midjourney's next phase depends as much on product craft as on model capability.
The Real Prize: First-Party Apps
The most strategically significant detail in the announcement is buried toward the end: Guler and her team will help Midjourney build the company's first apps, including a dedicated image generation app. Midjourney has, until now, distributed almost entirely through Discord and a web interface, a constraint that shaped both its community culture and its growth ceiling. A first-party mobile or desktop app would let Midjourney control the onboarding flow, push notifications, and pricing in a way Discord never allowed. The reported spring closing date suggests the deal has been in motion well before Thursday's public reveal, and the timing lines up with broader speculation across the industry that Midjourney has been preparing to launch consumer products outside Discord. If the image-generation app lands well, Co-Star functions less as a moonshot and more as an acqui-hire wrapped around a working product laboratory.
Key points
- Midjourney has acquired personalized astrology app Co-Star, with the deal reportedly closing in spring 2026.
- Co-Star founder Banu Guler will continue running the app and become Midjourney's chief design officer.
- Guler and her team will help Midjourney build its first standalone apps, including a dedicated image generation app.
- Co-Star combines human insight, NASA data, and AI to deliver personalized daily horoscopes and compatibility readings.
- The acquisition marks a strategic shift for Midjourney away from its Discord-first distribution model.
If the Co-Star team's design instincts translate to Midjourney's consumer products, the company could finally ship a polished standalone image generation app that breaks its dependence on Discord. The daily-engagement pattern of Co-Star users also offers a real-world testbed for personalizing AI experiences in a way that goes well beyond generic chatbots.
The two products share almost no obvious technical overlap, and integrating a horoscope app into an image generation company could distract leadership during a period when competitors are shipping agentic tools and video models at a rapid clip. There is also a real risk that Co-Star's cult audience reacts badly to the change in ownership and the app loses the editorial identity that made it distinctive.
