Midjourney is venturing into AI hardware – because that’s apparently what you do
Midjourney is known as one of the better AI image generators, but now the company wants to make hardware as well. The company announced the strategy change on X (formerly Twitter) by asking people to apply for the new team.
There aren’t many details about what kind of hardware Midjourney plans to build. In follow-up posts, Midjourney said it won’t be a hanger and that “several form factors” are being considered. The company hinted that it would create something more immersive, though it may have been a joke when a post described the hardware as something to “get inside.”
While Midjourney is hiring for its hardware team, there’s at least one big name on board. Midjourney hired former Apple Vision Pro headset Hardware Engineering Manager Ahmad Abbas to lead its hardware division last year. Abbas has a history with Midjourney CEO David Holz dating back to their time together at Leap Motion, and has the virtual reality and hardware credentials to back some ambitious ideas at Midjourney.
We are officially moving into hardware. If you are interested in joining the new team in San Francisco, email us at hardware@midjourney.comAugust 28, 2024
Midjourney Races By
Midjourney’s foray into hardware comes as the company faces stiff competition from other AI image creators, including Flux, which is embedded on X via the Grok AI chatbot, and the recently upgraded Ideogram. Diversifying into hardware seems like a no-brainer on the surface, but AI devices have had a rocky path. That’s perhaps why Midjourney has explicitly rejected the idea of a pendant, which is what the Humane AI Pin and Plaud.ai’s new NotePin look like, and are also not all that different from the Rabbit R1 device.
Beyond the excitement among Midjourney’s fans, the company will have to do something to stand out as innovative if it wants its hardware to be interesting, useful, and well-received. Even tech giants like Meta or Snapchat can’t quite hit their sales targets for AI-powered devices like their smart glasses. Still, it’s fun to imagine what Midjourney’s hardware could be. Perhaps it would involve more direct interaction with the AI-generated images it produces, or even crossing over into the much-vaunted but now quietly ignored realm of the metaverse.