AI startup Midjourney Inc. has officially launched Midjourney Medical with a $74 million investment in a whole-body ultrasound scanning business, marking a significant strategic pivot from its traditional generative AI services. The company announced the launch on June 18, 2025, partnering with ultrasound manufacturer Butterfly Network through an eight-figure deal previously disclosed in November. Under the terms, Midjourney will pay a one-time fee of $15 million and a $10 million annual licensing fee to Butterfly Network, with additional payments of up to $9 million tied to certain milestones. The partnership will span five years, with Butterfly Network's stock price leaping 33% on the announcement news.
The ultrasonic CT technology requires users to be partially submerged in water and will debut in 'Midjourney Spa' locations, with the first flagship facility planned to open at the end of 2027. The spa will feature hot tubs, saunas, cold plunges and cozy rooms with pools of golden light, among other amenities. The company claims the scanner will create 3D maps of the body with ultrasonic CT taking as little as 60 seconds for whole-body imaging. Midjourney will deploy 10 scanners at the spa with the capability to perform more body scans annually than all MRI scanners on earth combined. The physical design replaces the dry, enclosed bore of standard diagnostic machinery with a vertical, liquid-immersion scanning tank where users stand on a platform illuminated by golden light, descending into the water at a steady rate of five centimeters per second. Water serves as the physical acoustic coupling medium, replacing localized gels used in traditional ultrasound to ensure continuous wave transmission across the skin.
Radiologists have expressed significant skepticism about Midjourney's claims, with Francis Deng, MD, a Baltimore-based neuroradiologist, noting that Midjourney previously generated an anatomically incorrect image of a rat's anatomy which was published and later retracted from Frontiers. Deng criticized the project's 'fundamental inability of ultrasound to penetrate through bone, air, and deep soft tissues, rendering many body parts inaccessible'. Gennaro D'Anna, MD, an Italian neuroradiologist, acknowledged the concept's 'intriguing nature' but emphasized that 'in medicine, we are impressed by evidence, rather than shining images'. Breast radiologist Laura Heacock, MD, questioned assertions that 'nobody's ever done this before,' noting that ultrasound tomographic systems already are commercially available for breast imaging.
The company has set an ambitious goal to deploy 50,000 scanners worldwide by 2031, with a total scanning capacity of a billion scans monthly - enough to cover a huge percentage of the global population or provide regular, monthly scans to a billion people. Over the next 12 months, Midjourney will work on refining algorithms and hardware while conducting research trials to 'show off the raw capabilities of our system' and submitting test results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for increased capabilities. The first physical facility is planned to open near Union Square in San Francisco in late 2027, designed as a 25,000-square-foot space housing nine or ten scanners alongside high-end wellness amenities. The company plans to transition to its third-generation scanner in 2028, introducing custom silicon to improve resolution and image quality, with the goal of securing FDA clearances for active medical diagnoses. Future generations will utilize substantially more imaging modules than the current 40 Butterfly Ultrasound-on-Chip imaging modules per system.
Before Wednesday's announcement, Midjourney was primarily known as a generative AI subscription service that allows customers to create images and video clips, with prices ranging from $10 to $120 per month. The startup has faced legal challenges from content owners including Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. and Walt Disney Co. over alleged theft of intellectual property, with entertainment companies claiming that their well-known characters have appeared in Midjourney's generated images and videos. The company was founded by David Holz and gained popularity for its text-to-image AI prompts, positioning itself as a 'community-backed research lab' that shuns institutional investors. This corporate structure protects the company from external investor pressure, but a pivot into capital-intensive medical manufacturing presents significant financial risks.
