Midjourney has acquired Co-Star, the social astrology app, in the first acquisition in the image lab's history. Terms were not disclosed.
What changed hands
Co-Star brings roughly 4.3 million monthly active users and 24 employees. Founder Banu Guler becomes Midjourney's chief design officer, and Midjourney founder David Holz said the app will remain entirely under Guler's control and direction. The companies announced it through posts on X rather than a press release.
The deal is older than the news
The transaction closed in spring 2026 and was previously unreported. What happened this week is the disclosure, not the acquisition — a distinction most coverage drops.
Two numbers, not one
Guler has separately claimed Co-Star reached 35% of young people in the US with tens of millions of downloads. That is a cumulative reach claim from the founder, and it is not the same thing as the 4.3 million monthly active figure. Conflating them inflates the app by an order of magnitude.
What Midjourney is actually buying
Not model capability — Midjourney has that. It is buying consumer design talent and a standalone app surface, which fits a company that spent years distributing a frontier image model through a Discord bot, an interface that quietly filtered its user base down to people willing to learn slash commands.
Where this is going
Bloomberg reported alongside the acquisition that Midjourney is building its own applications. Holz's commitment that Co-Star stays under Guler's direction suggests it continues as a product rather than being absorbed for talent — an unusual arrangement, and one that only works if the acquirer genuinely wants the thing it bought to keep existing.