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Get ready for a game-changer in the world of AI! Midjourney, known for its popular AI image generator tool, is making a bold move into the hardware space.

The firm recently announced its expansion, sparking curiosity about what kind of innovative AI products they have in store. So, let’s decode the reasons behind Midjourney’s entry into hardware and what this means for the future of AI technology.

Midjourney pivots to hardware space

Founder of Midjourney David Holz entered the AI image generator space when this field lacked big players and the result was- immense popularity. Currently, the company’s Discord community has more than 1.4 million registered users.

This text-to-image AI tool garnered attention which led to the company generating over $200 million in revenue, that too without any Venture Capital funding. It is one of the successfully bootstrapped AI startups.

David is no stranger to the hardware sector. He was one of the co-founders of Leap Motion, a startup that developed motion-tracking devices with haptic technology. To lead the hardware team, David appointed Ahmad Abbas, who has an impressive background and formerly worked at Leap Motion.

Abbas previously served as a hardware engineering manager for Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset and was also a part of Elon Musk’s Neuralink hardware design team. Given that David and Ahmad are experts in the Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality fields, it’s been speculated that their new hardware product could be in a similar space.

What is Midjourney planning to develop?

While the firm has not given any kind of hints or exact details, there are quite a few possible hardware product lines they can develop. Let’s explore them.

AR/VR product

With the success of Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality products like Apple Vision Pro, Midjourney could also try to build its own version of a headset or glasses. Since the firm has a solid AI text-to-image model in place that creates aesthetic and detailed artistic renditions, it can be coupled with an AR/VR device.

AI-powered chips

There are also rumours that Midjourney could develop Inference chips or AI-powered hardware that will enhance their image generation capabilities.

AI wearable

The firm could also develop a customised AI wearable device that could integrate with its platform. Interestingly, when a user on X (formerly Twitter) mentioned this, Midjourney replied by saying “Is it wearable if you have to go inside of it?”

This could mean that Midjourney is exploring a 3-dimensional immersive AI product but nothing is confirmed as of yet.

Stiff competiton amongst AI image generators

Two years ago, Midjourney was a pioneering text-to-image generator in the market. Fast forward to today, we have an array of cutting-edge tools such as Flux, Dall-E 2, Adobe Firefly, Grok 2, Ideogram, Imagen 2, and many more.

The competition in this market is fierce, with tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI vying for dominance. Considering the intensity of the competition, diversifying into other domains seems like a smart business move to stay ahead of the game.

The bottom line

Midjourney is gearing up for the future with a small yet incredibly talented team specialising in hardware development. While the specifics of their AI-powered hardware product remain a mystery, it’s going to be very interesting to see how Midjourney navigates in this space.