Midjourney Acquires Co-Star as It Expands Consumer Apps

In its announcement, Midjourney said Co-Star founder Banu Guler is now its chief design officer. Guler is building a cross-functional design, product, and front-end team across Midjourney’s efforts, while the Co-Star app will continue operating under her control.

That makes the acquisition more than a purchase of an existing consumer app. Midjourney is also bringing in a team experienced in product design and in operating a mobile service with recurring engagement. TechCrunch reports that Co-Star’s roughly two dozen employees joined Midjourney as part of the deal.

Midjourney remains best known for image and video generation, historically delivered through Discord rather than a standalone consumer app. TechCrunch and What’s Trending connect the Co-Star deal to the lab’s broader push into direct consumer products, including reporting that it is developing a standalone image-generation app.

Co-Star gives Midjourney an operating consumer product and a team familiar with mobile design, notifications, subscriptions, and social interaction. TechCrunch cites Sensor Tower data estimating about 4.3 million monthly active users, though Midjourney did not publish that figure in its announcement.

The acquisition does not establish that Midjourney will combine Co-Star’s astrology service with its generative media models. The company’s public statement instead emphasizes Guler’s wider design role and says Co-Star will remain under her direction.

For product and data teams, the useful signal is organizational: Midjourney is adding consumer-app expertise alongside its model work. Building a durable standalone product requires capabilities beyond model quality, including onboarding, retention, payments, moderation, experimentation, and reliable mobile delivery.

The unanswered questions are equally important. Neither company disclosed the purchase price, integration roadmap, or data-sharing plans. Until Midjourney provides those details, claims about how Co-Star user data or astrology content might feed other Midjourney products would be speculation.