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Midjourney’s Continued Dominance in AI
Even three years after its launch, Midjourney, the bootstrapped startup from San Francisco, continues to set the standard in the AI image and video generation sector, boasting 20 million users, including us here at VentureBeat, where we utilize it to create the header art for many of our articles. This sentiment is echoed by the leaders at Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Recently, Alexandr Wang, the former founder and CEO of Scale AI, who now serves as Meta’s Chief AI Officer and head of the newly established Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), announced a partnership with Midjourney—reportedly the first collaboration of its kind for the independent AI image startup.
Wang shared on X, a competing social network to Meta’s own Threads and Facebook, that Meta will “license their aesthetic technology for our future models and products, bringing beauty to billions.”
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Strategic Partnership
Wang’s announcement on August 22, 2025, emphasized the significance of the partnership with Midjourney, highlighting how it will enhance Meta’s offerings. While Midjourney had previously been in talks with Elon Musk and xAI regarding potential integrations, xAI initially launched its Grok image generation using technology from Black Forest Labs’ Flux AI image model and now appears to have developed its own native image generation capabilities.
Two months ago, Midjourney introduced a feature that transforms images created on its platform or uploaded by users into artistic and captivating videos, impressing many and exceeding expectations. Wang described this collaboration as part of a broader philosophy—Meta’s “all-of-the-above” approach to advanced AI development. This strategy includes attracting top research talent, investing billions in computing infrastructure, and partnering with companies like Midjourney, whose expertise complements Meta’s capabilities.
Midjourney’s Commitment to Independence
Wang praised Midjourney for its “true feats of technical and aesthetic excellence,” expressing Meta’s eagerness to leverage that expertise. For Midjourney, this partnership presents a chance to integrate its technology into one of the largest digital ecosystems globally. However, in his own post on X, Midjourney founder David Holz was quick to reaffirm the lab’s independence. He reminded followers that Midjourney remains community-supported, has no outside investors, and is dedicated to a range of ambitious projects aimed at fostering what he describes as more “humane futures.”
Holz stated, “Bringing sublime tools of creation and beauty to billions of people is squarely within our mission. Excited to partner with the titans of industry to make this happen.”
Future Implications of the Partnership
On paper, this collaboration appears beneficial. Meta provides scale, distribution, and immense computational power, while Midjourney contributes a creative edge developed through extensive model training to produce imagery that resonates with human preferences. This partnership combines brute force with design flair, potentially helping Meta’s AI systems feel less utilitarian and more inspired.
However, many details remain unclear. Neither company has disclosed the financial terms of the deal, nor has there been any announcement regarding when Midjourney’s technology will be integrated into Meta’s products or how it will influence the company’s AI strategy. Will this collaboration enhance the polish of Meta’s chatbots—recently criticized and even mistaken for real people? Will it be applied to improve Meta’s virtual reality environments or enhance creative tools across Instagram and Facebook? These questions remain unanswered. Additionally, there is uncertainty surrounding Midjourney’s plans to develop an external application programming interface (API) for other enterprises to create products and services using its powerful image generation models.