Midjourney buys astrology app Co-Star to finally build real apps

If someone told you that AI image giant Midjourney just bought a horoscope app, you would probably assume it was an internet parody.

It is entirely real. Midjourney announced on Thursday that it has acquired the social astrology app Co-Star. Bloomberg first reported the move, noting that while the deal reportedly closed back in the spring, the financial terms remain strictly under wraps.

Bringing consumer design to a Discord native

For those unfamiliar, Co-Star is a free mobile app boasting roughly 4.3 million monthly active users. People use it to calculate their astrological birth charts, read daily horoscopes, and check relationship compatibility with friends. The app famously blends NASA planetary data, human astrological insight, and AI to generate its cryptic daily advice.

Midjourney is not suddenly pivoting to zodiac charts, however. The real prize here is product talent.

Co-Star founder Banu Guler is taking on the role of chief design officer at Midjourney, while continuing to oversee the astrology app. Her team of two dozen employees is joining Midjourney alongside her.

Midjourney founder David Holz revealed that Guler and her crew are tasked with building the company's first standalone apps, including a dedicated client for AI image generation. Right now, Midjourney still lives almost entirely inside Discord and a web portal, completely lacking a native mobile home.

As TechCrunch pointed out, Midjourney has a history of wandering down peculiar rabbit holes. The lab has previously explored projects spanning healthcare scans and even physical spas. Bringing a trendy astrology app into the fold fits right into their eccentric playbook.

Why it matters

We think this deal looks weird on the surface, but it solves Midjourney's biggest vulnerability.

For everyday creators, Midjourney has always had incredible visual chops paired with a frustrating user experience. Generating art by typing slash commands in a crowded Discord chat or juggling a browser tab is fine for power users, but it repels mainstream consumers. Co-Star built an intensely loyal following largely because of its minimalist, highly shareable mobile interface. Putting that design team in charge of Midjourney's upcoming apps could finally make elite image generation feel effortless on a phone.

For the AI landscape, it signals that the era of technical superiority without consumer polish is ending. Midjourney is facing fierce competition from tech giants who already dominate mobile ecosystems. By bringing in twenty-four people who already know how to retain millions of daily app users, Midjourney is admitting that raw model weights alone won't win the next phase of the consumer AI war.