Midjourney pivots to full-body ultrasound scanners and spas

Midjourney spent years turning text prompts into fantasy art. Now, it wants to image what is inside your body.

The company announced Midjourney Medical, introducing its first hardware product: the Midjourney Scanner. The real twist is where it plans to put it. Instead of traditional diagnostic imaging clinics or hospital basements, the company plans to debut the machine inside a luxury spa in San Francisco.

A 60-second underwater ultrasound

The Midjourney Scanner abandons the noisy, claustrophobic experience of traditional magnetic resonance imaging in favor of what the company calls Ultrasonic CT.

A user steps onto a platform that lowers them into a shallow pool of water ringed with 500,000 ultrasonic sensors. Soundwaves shoot through the body from every angle, pumping out terabytes of raw data per second. A backend compute cluster then reconstructs those waves into full 3D cross-sectional slices showing muscle, fat, bone, and internal organs in roughly 60 seconds, completely free of ionizing radiation or intense magnetic fields.

Midjourney CEO David Holz claims the resolution rivals an MRI scan in a fraction of the time. To pull off the silicon side, Midjourney partnered with Butterfly Network, a publicly traded ultrasound chip maker. SEC filings reveal a five-year co-development deal worth up to $74 million, with the current prototype packing 40 Butterfly Ultrasound-on-Chip modules.

Saunas, cold plunges, and body scans

The rollout strategy is where things get truly unusual. Midjourney has already leased a 25,000-square-foot space in San Francisco's Union Square, aiming to open the Midjourney Spa by the end of 2027.

The venue plans to house around 10 scanners alongside hot tubs, cold plunges, saunas, and a gym. The vision is simple: turn preventative health screening into a byproduct of a relaxing wellness routine. Midjourney hopes to release a second-generation scanner powered by custom silicon in 2028, with an ambitious goal of deploying 50,000 units worldwide by 2031.

Still, the reality on the ground is early. Only about a dozen people have actually been scanned so far. Crucially, the machine does not have FDA clearance for medical diagnostics. Holz noted that the device is not even using any AI yet. To get to market, Midjourney plans to start with body composition mapping, which avoids FDA roadblocks, before gradually seeking formal medical clearance.

Why it matters

Pivoting from generative software subscriptions to physical medical hardware looks like an astonishing gamble. But strategically, Midjourney's commercial workaround is fascinating.

Traditional hospital MRIs can cost thousands of dollars, demand doctor referrals, and trap patients in loud tubes for an hour. By framing full-body imaging as a rapid, radiation-free wellness perk, Midjourney is pitching straight to health-conscious consumers with disposable income.

We think starting with a consumer spa is a clever way to sidestep the brutal clinical trial cycles and bureaucratic procurement pipelines that sink most medical device startups. It lets the company generate early revenue, stress-test the hardware, and build an unprecedented dataset of human scans long before it has to pass strict medical evaluations.

However, the technical and logistical hurdles are enormous. Ultrasound has well-documented physical limitations when penetrating dense bone or air-filled lungs. Whether soundwave reconstruction can genuinely match MRI clarity across complex internal organs remains an open question that radiologists will scrutinize heavily.

Scaling physical wellness locations and managing hardware manufacturing is also a world away from running software servers. While 50,000 machines by 2031 sounds more like science fiction than an actionable business plan, the broader signal is clear: top AI teams are no longer content staying inside the screen. Whether Midjourney Medical becomes a breakthrough in preventative care or an eccentric tech vanity project will depend entirely on what happens when those San Francisco doors open in 2027.