Quality Engineer

Midjourney Buys Co-Star, the Astrology App with 4.3M users. Midjourney quietly acquired astrology app Co-Star in spring 2026, bringing its 4.3 million monthly users and roughly two dozen staff in-house, with founder Banu Guler becoming Midjourney's Chief Design Officer. Midjourney, the AI image lab that has never taken venture money and still runs much of its product through a Discord server, has bought Co-Star, the astrology app. Bloomberg reported the deal on Friday. It closed quietly in spring 2026, terms were not disclosed, and Co-Star's roughly two dozen employees have joined Midjourney. Founder Banu Guler is now Midjourney's Chief Design Officer. The joke writes itself, and most coverage let it. The more useful reading is that Midjourney did not buy astrology. It bought a consumer product team with 4.3 million monthly users and nine years of practice shipping something people open every morning. Midjourney has neither of those things. Co-Star was founded in 2017 by Banu Guler, Anna Kopp and Ben Weitzman. It raised about $21 million across three rounds: a $750,000 pre-seed, a $5.2 million seed in 2019, and a $15 million Series A led by Spark Capital in April 2021, with Maveron and Female Founders Fund participating. What it built is more relevant than what it raised. Co-Star generates horoscopes, compatibility readings and daily advice using a mix of machine generation and human writers. That is not a novelty detail. It means Co-Star has already solved, at scale and for years, the exact problem Midjourney is walking into: shipping generated text to millions of consumers every single day, with an editorial layer on top, without it reading as slop. Very few consumer companies have that muscle. Almost no AI labs do. Guler keeps control of Co-Star, and the app continues to operate. Because the model stopped being the bottleneck. Midjourney's output has been competitive since 2022 and remains so. Its distribution has not kept pace. Running a paid product inside a Discord server was a genuinely clever growth hack four years ago, when the community was the product and the friction filtered for enthusiasts. In 2026, with every competitor shipping a polished mobile app, it is a tax. Midjourney still has no standalone consumer app. Co-Star's team has shipped and maintained one continuously since 2017. David Holz framed it in exactly those terms, saying he was excited to have Guler and her team "join Midjourney to help build a broader organization around Product and Design." Guler's own framing was more pointed: "We're at a crazy moment in history. At a time when it feels like many labs are pushing toward replacing humans with computers, David and I are taking a different approach." | Midjourney | Before the deal | After | | Primary surface | Discord and web | Discord, web, plus Co-Star | | Standalone mobile app | None | One, and a team who ships them | | Design leadership | No named CDO | Banu Guler, Chief Design Officer | | Consumer users on a daily habit | Not the model | 4.3M monthly on Co-Star | | Outside funding | None | Still none | The medical hardware is the tell. Midjourney has been experimenting with a scanning device it describes as a cheaper alternative to an MRI, and Bloomberg reports ambitions stretching into healthcare and even spa services. None of that is an image model. All of it is consumer product, and all of it fails without designers. This is also the kind of move only a bootstrapped company can make. Midjourney has never raised outside capital, so there is no board pressing it to defend market share in image generation, a category that is commoditizing quickly and where the marginal buyer increasingly cannot tell the outputs apart. Instead of spending its cash on more compute to hold a lead that is narrowing anyway, Midjourney spent it on a design team and a scanner. * 2017Co-Star founded Guler, Kopp and Weitzman * Apr 2019$5.2M seed Android launch * Apr 2021$15M Series A led by Spark Capital * Spring 2026Midjourney acquisition closes unreported at the time, terms undisclosed * Jul 24, 2026Bloomberg reports the deal Guler named Chief Design Officer * NextMidjourney's first standalone app no announced date What it means for consumer app valuations. Both companies are private and terms were not disclosed, so there is no clean valuation read here. The signal sits elsewhere. Co-Star raised $21 million into a category that has been out of favor with investors for years, and the acquirer was not a social app or a media company. It was an AI lab with cash and no product surface. For anyone holding equity in a mid-sized consumer app with real daily engagement, that is worth noting: the buyers with the most cash right now are model companies, and what they are short of is not technology. It is habit, interface and the people who know how to build both. Expect more of these, and expect them to look similarly odd on the surface. This is analysis, not investment advice. What to watch * Whether the standalone app actually ships. Midjourney has been rumored to be building one for years. Guler's arrival is the first concrete reason to expect it. * Co-Star's product direction. If Midjourney's models start writing the horoscopes outright, retention will show whether users liked the humans in the loop. * The scanner. A consumer medical device from an image-generation company is either the most interesting thing Midjourney does or a very expensive detour. * Copycat deals. The next AI lab to buy a beloved mid-size consumer app confirms the pattern rather than the punchline. Its take. Everyone got the headline they wanted out of this: AI company buys horoscope app, insert joke about prompting the stars. The deal is more legible than that. Frontier labs spent four years competing on model quality because model quality was the scarce thing. It is getting less scarce every quarter. What remains scarce is a product people open without being asked, and the small number of designers who know how to build one. Midjourney, uniquely among the labs in that it answers to nobody, looked at that and bought the team instead of the GPUs. Guler's line about not wanting to replace humans with computers reads like a values statement. It is also a fairly precise description of what Midjourney just paid for. Primary sources * ReportBloomberg: Midjourney Buys Astrology App Co-Star broke the deal, 4.3M monthly users * ReportTechCrunch: Midjourney acquired the astrology app Co-Star team size, standalone app ambitions * QuotesGizmodo: 'Genz Tech is at a Crazy Moment in History' Holz and Guler statements, spring close * FundingAxios: Co-Star raises $15 million Series A led by Spark Capital, April 2021 * OfficialCo-Star the app continues under Guler Original analysis by GenZTech. Deal first reported by Bloomberg. What did Midjourney actually acquire? Why does an image lab need a design organization? Is Midjourney turning into a consumer company? // published on GENZ TECH, latest tech news, decoded

Recent digital health trends, insights and news - july, 2026. The Innovations, investments, and policy updates shaping digital health in July. June brought no shortage of developments shaping the future of digital health. An AI wearable patch achieved 99.6% accuracy in detecting life-threatening heart arrhythmias, Midjourney unveiled an underwater ultrasound scanner designed to create a 3D map of the human body in just 60 seconds, ATA action brings top federal telehealth policies to capitol hill, and OpenLoop introduced a platform that enables organizations to stand up a virtual care brand in as little as 24 hours. Here's what's driving digital health forward this month. Technology, news, and insights. AI voice analysis comes to telehealth visits through Zoom. Canary Speech announced that its AI-powered vocal biomarker platform, Canary Ambient(TM), is now available through the Zoom App Marketplace, allowing clinicians to analyze patient speech during telehealth visits in real time. The technology evaluates more than 2,500 acoustic and linguistic speech features to identify patterns associated with stress, depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline - potentially before symptoms become obvious or traditional screening methods detect concerns. Midjourney introduces 60-second full-body ultrasound scanner. AI company Midjourney announced an ambitious new healthcare venture centered around an underwater ultrasound scanner designed to create a 3D map of the human body in just 60 seconds. The system lowers users into a water-filled chamber, where a ring of ultrasonic sensors uses echolocation - similar to a dolphin, to image the body from multiple angles. Midjourney says the technology is designed to make advanced body imaging "as powerful as an MRI, and as casual as a trip to the spa." Wearable AI patch could bring an "instantaneous doctor" to your skin. Researchers at the University of Chicago developed a flexible AI-powered computing patch that analyzes health data directly on the body instead of sending it to an external cloud, delivering medical insights in milliseconds. The wearable achieved 99.6% accuracy in identifying life-threatening heart rhythm abnormalities and is designed to support faster detection of cardiac emergencies when every second counts. Researchers say the technology could pave the way for wearable devices that continuously monitor, analyze, and respond to health data in real time Policy and regulatory. New federal bill aims to eliminate facility fees for telehealth services. On June 24, 2026, Representative Jahana Hayes (D-CT) introduced the Fair Telehealth Billing Act of 2026 (H.R. 9431), legislation aimed at improving cost transparency and reducing patient expenses for virtual care. The bill would amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to prohibit healthcare providers and facilities from charging a separate facility fee for telehealth services when an independently billable professional fee is also charged, helping prevent duplicate billing while ensuring providers remain appropriately reimbursed. ATA Action advances federal telehealth priorities on capitol hill. On June 10, 2026, ATA Action, the advocacy arm of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA), met with more than 35 Congressional offices during its annual Hill Day to advocate for policies that expand and protect access to virtual care. Key priorities included making Medicare telehealth flexibilities permanent, preserving telehealth prescribing of controlled substances, expanding cross-state care, establishing Medicare reimbursement for prescription digital therapeutics (PDTs), and advancing the Federal Virtual Foodcare Act. CMS launches new Office to advance AI and digital health innovation. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) established a new Office of Health Technology Products (OHTP) to oversee AI, interoperability, digital health tools, and other emerging healthcare technologies. The office will help modernize CMS technology, strengthen health data exchange, and develop policies supporting the responsible adoption of AI across federal healthcare programs. Industry conversations. AI, Virtual Nursing, and Hospital-at-Home Lead the Conversation at SEARCH 2026. From AI-powered clinical decision support to virtual nursing and hospital-at-home programs, SEARCH 2026 showcased the technologies expected to define the next era of connected care. Researchers presented new evidence supporting remote patient monitoring, digital health equity, and telehealth's expanding role in maternal and pediatric care, highlighting how healthcare organizations are shifting from testing digital health solutions to scaling proven models across clinical practice. WHO calls for AI to support - not replace, health policy decision-making. The World Health Organization released a new discussion paper outlining how AI could transform the way health policies are developed, evaluated, and implemented while cautioning against overreliance on automated decision-making. The report emphasizes that AI should strengthen - not replace - human judgment, warning that bias, data gaps, and over-optimization could weaken evidence-based policymaking if left unchecked. Telehealth and Medicine Today publishes June 2026 issue on AI, market shifts, and care transformation. The latest issue of Telehealth and Medicine Today focuses on AI, market shifts, and care transformation, providing insights into telehealth's future. This publication underscores key trends shaping the industry, particularly AI's increasing influence on service delivery models. Growth, funding, and innovation. Clair Health raises $11.6 million to advance noninvasive hormone monitoring. Women's health startup Clair Health raised $11.6 million to develop a wearable designed to continuously monitor hormonal changes without invasive blood draws. The device combines 10 biosensors with AI-powered voice biomarker analysis to provide personalized insights into menstrual cycles, perimenopause, inflammation, and other hormone-related health conditions. The investment reflects growing momentum behind women's health technologies as investors continue backing solutions that deliver more personalized, data-driven care. OpenLoop resources & news. OpenLoop unveils Launchpad for rapid virtual care deployment. OpenLoop introduced Launchpad, a turnkey platform that enables health and wellness brands, fitness companies, and healthcare organizations to launch a virtual care brand in as little as 24 hours. Built on OpenLoop's nationwide clinical infrastructure and operations, Launchpad combines patient intake, provider operations, compliance, and care delivery into a single platform, significantly reducing the time and complexity of launching a virtual care offering. OpenLoop Health reflects on a strong first half of 2026. As the first half of 2026 comes to a close, OpenLoop Health continues to build momentum through strategic growth, new partnerships, and innovative virtual care solutions. Highlights include the acquisition of Season Health, expanding the company's nutrition and chronic care capabilities; a partnership with Happy Sleep to increase access to at-home sleep diagnostics; and the launch of Launchpad, a turnkey platform that enables organizations to launch branded virtual care programs in as little as 24 hours. The 3 digital health shifts OpenLoop's CCO is seeing right now. OpenLoop Chief Commercial Officer Chris Aker breaks down three shifts reshaping digital health: AI becoming the patient's first point of contact, consumers demanding more proactive care, and trusted brands expanding into virtual care. These aren't future trends - they're happening right now... Aker unpacks what each shift means for healthcare leaders and how to act on them in the second half of 2026. Want monthly tips on how to scale your digital health company faster and smarter? *This content is intended for general informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. 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