{"id":8236,"date":"2026-06-20T09:24:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=8236"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:24:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T09:24:49","slug":"midjourney-just-built-something-youd-never-expect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=8236","title":{"rendered":"Midjourney just built something you'd never expect"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Every company eventually asks what it wants to be when it grows up. Most pick an answer that fits the business they already run.<\/p>\n

A software firm builds more software. A retailer opens more stores. The safe move is to stay in your lane and defend the turf you already own.<\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence (AI) labs have mostly followed that script. The biggest names, OpenAI and Google among them, keep fighting over the same crowded ground: chatbots, coding assistants, and the image and video generators that now flood social feeds.<\/p>\n

The competition is brutal, the copyright lawsuits are piling up, and the pressure to look different from the next lab gets heavier every quarter.<\/p>\n

So when one of those image companies finally answered the question of what it wants to become, I expected the usual: another model, another app, maybe a cheaper monthly plan to undercut a rival.<\/p>\n

What I did not expect was a pivot this far off the map. The company behind some of the internet’s most recognizable AI art, Midjourney, said on June 17 that it is building a full-body medical scanner.<\/p>\n

How Midjourney went from AI art to body scans<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Midjourney is not a typical Silicon Valley story. The lab has no outside investors and runs on subscription fees of $10 to $120 a month, according to PYMNTS.<\/p>\n

Founder David Holz, who earlier co-founded the gesture-control company Leap Motion, has turned Midjourney into one of the most recognizable names in generative imagery.<\/p>\n

Related: The Mental Health Effects of AI Driven Job Insecurity<\/strong><\/p>\n

That is what makes the swerve so strange. An image lab with no venture backers and no hardware history just told the world its next act is a medical scanner meant to rival a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine.<\/p>\n

Holz pitched it as the first genuinely new full-body imaging technology in five decades. The company admitted in its announcement that the idea sits far outside anything it has built before.<\/p>\n

The scanner is one of eight projects the lab is running, split evenly between hardware and software, according to PYMNTS. Most companies would bury a medical device in a research note. Midjourney made it the headline.<\/p>\n

The mechanism reads like science fiction. You step onto a platform that lowers you into a shallow pool of warm water at about two inches per second, while a ring of sensors fires sound waves through your body from every angle.<\/p>\n

Midjourney compares the sensors to a dolphin using echolocation.<\/p>\n

\n

Midjourney plans a 60-second full-body scanner and a spa.<\/p>\n

Shinsei Motions &sol; Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Inside the Midjourney scanner, spa, and Butterfly deal<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The product, announced June 17, is called the Midjourney Scanner, and it anchors a new division named Midjourney Medical. The company says a prototype builds a full three-dimensional map of the body in 60 seconds, with no radiation and no powerful magnets.<\/p>\n

The pitch is built for people who hate hospitals. The system is “as powerful as MRI, and as casual as a trip to the spa,” according to Midjourney’s blog post.<\/p>\n

Then comes the part that explains the warm water. Since you are already wet, Midjourney is building a spa to go with the machine.<\/p>\n

The first one is set for San Francisco’s Union Square, spanning three floors with a gym, saunas, cold plunges, and hot tubs, with about ten scanners inside, opening in 2027.<\/p>\n

Here is where the markets reader needs to slow down. Midjourney is privately held, so you cannot buy its stock.<\/p>\n

More Healthcare<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • AstraZeneca says Al is raising its odds where most drugs fail<\/strong><\/li>\n
  • Schwab flags a $1 trillion threat looming over health care<\/strong><\/li>\n
  • Microsoft and Copilot just hit a jackpot in healthcare<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The investable angle runs through its hardware partner. The scanner is built on chips from Butterfly Network (NYSE: BFLY), and its shares jumped after the reveal, according to Yahoo Finance.<\/p>\n

    Midjourney licensed Butterfly’s ultrasound-on-chip technology in November 2025, and each current prototype packs 40 of those chips, according to Butterfly Network.<\/p>\n

    The agreement could be worth up to $74 million to Butterfly over five years, with $15 million paid up front and $10 million in annual fees, according to PYMNTS.<\/p>\n

    The partnership “represents a potentially meaningful commercial opportunity for Butterfly,” said its chief executive, Joseph DeVivo.<\/p>\n

    The Midjourney pitch by the numbers:<\/h3>\n
      \n
    • 60-second full-body scan with no radiation or magnets, according to Midjourney<\/li>\n
    • 40 Butterfly ultrasound-on-chip modules in each prototype, says Butterfly Network<\/li>\n
    • Up to $74 million in payments to Butterfly over five years, according to PYMNTS<\/li>\n
    • 50,000 scanners and 1 billion scans a month targeted by 2031, per PYMNTS<\/li>\n
    • First spa opening in San Francisco in 2027, according to Midjourney<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      What the Midjourney scanner means for your health and money<\/strong><\/h2>\n

      When I ran the claims against what the company has actually shipped, the gap was wide.<\/p>\n

      Holz has acknowledged the scanner barely uses artificial intelligence, it has no clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and only about a dozen people have been scanned so far.<\/p>\n

      Doctors have concerns that go past the hardware. Frequent full-body scans can surface incidental findings and false positives that drive anxiety and unnecessary follow-up care, radiologists told Business Insider.<\/p>\n

      The federal screening standard backs that caution. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends preventive scans only when the evidence shows a clear net benefit, and regulators have grown stricter about consumer health products, as TheStreet highlighted.<\/p>\n

      Not everyone is waving it off. Ultrasound is promising, but it cannot replace an MRI, a computed tomography (CT) scan, or a colonoscopy, because “different scans do different things,” science communicator Hank Green wrote, as reported by Business Insider.<\/p>\n

      My read is that this looks less like a finished medical breakthrough and more like a very expensive bet that casual scanning becomes normal.<\/p>\n

      The wallet question is the one Midjourney has not answered. The company has stayed quiet on what a scan will cost, who stores your health data, and whether insurance covers any of it, all of which decide whether this reaches regular people or stays a luxury for the wealthy and worried.<\/p>\n

      Midjourney wants 50,000 scanners running worldwide and a billion scans a month by 2031, with a custom-silicon version due in 2028, according to PYMNTS.<\/p>\n

      That timeline only matters if the FDA agrees the scans help and if people actually want a body map with their sauna. The one sure winner today is Butterfly, and the next real test is whether the 2027 spa opens with paying customers or just a very photogenic pool.<\/p>\n

      Related: Palantir stock faces hidden AI risk after Google deal<\/strong><\/p>\n

      #Midjourney #built #you039d #expect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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