Midjourney Acquires Astrology App Co-Star
28 Jul 2026
Midjourney, the AI lab best known for its image and video generators, has acquired Co-Star, the social astrology app with roughly 4.3 million monthly active users. The deal closed this past spring but was only publicly reported on July 24, 2026, via TechCrunch and The Verge.
What happened
Co-Star's entire team — two dozen employees — has joined Midjourney as part of the acquisition. Founder Banu Guler will stay on to run the Co-Star app while also taking on a new role as Midjourney's chief design officer.
Co-Star is a free app that delivers daily horoscopes and friend compatibility checks by blending human insight, NASA data, and AI-driven personalization. Midjourney, by contrast, has built its reputation on AI image and video generation, currently distributed through the web and Discord rather than standalone apps.
According to the report, Guler and her team will help Midjourney build its first native apps, including one dedicated specifically to image generation — a notable shift for a company that has so far relied on Discord and browser-based access.
Why this deal stands out
The pairing is unusual on its face: an AI image/video lab acquiring a social astrology app. But the report frames the move as less about astrology content and more about talent, design expertise, and an established user base. Guler's elevation to chief design officer — rather than a purely advisory or maintenance role — suggests Midjourney valued her team's product and design capabilities as much as Co-Star's audience.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and the report doesn't explain why Midjourney chose to acquire an existing consumer app rather than build native apps internally. It's also unclear how Co-Star's user base or revenue model might change now that it sits inside a well-funded AI lab, or what timeline Midjourney has in mind for launching its first standalone apps.
Risks and open questions
A few frictions are worth flagging. Integrating a 24-person team from a very different product culture — astrology and community versus AI image/video generation — could pose organizational challenges. There's also a potential brand mismatch: Midjourney's identity is built around AI generation, while Co-Star's is rooted in personalized astrology, and reconciling the two publicly could create positioning confusion. Additionally, folding astrological and personal user data into a larger AI platform raises privacy considerations that the report does not resolve.
Why founders should care
This acquisition may be an early signal — though not a confirmed trend — that AI labs are increasingly willing to acquire consumer apps with established, engaged user bases rather than building similar products from scratch. It's plausible that companies in Midjourney's position see faster time-to-market and ready-made design talent as more valuable than incremental in-house development, especially when trying to break out of chat-platform interfaces like Discord.
The decision to retain Guler in a senior leadership role, rather than simply absorbing her team, also suggests that some AI companies may prioritize acquiring product vision and design leadership alongside technology and users. For founders running consumer apps with strong engagement metrics — even in categories seemingly unrelated to AI — this could indicate a somewhat higher likelihood of interest from AI labs looking to diversify beyond their core technical offerings and expand into native app experiences.
That said, with deal terms undisclosed and Midjourney's broader app strategy still unspecified, it remains uncertain how representative this single acquisition is of a wider pattern. Founders should treat it as a data point worth watching rather than a confirmed shift in how AI companies approach growth.