In the fast-paced world of Artificial Intelligence, where startups often vie for investor attention, Midjourney emerges as an example of success with its streamlined team and robust revenue stream. Founded by the 35-year-old, David Holz, the company has not only disrupted the AI drawing field but has achieved this feat with a lean team of just 11 employees, projecting $200 million in annual revenue as per sources.
Midjourney’s success to prominence hinges on its distinctive approach to generating images from natural language descriptions. With subscription packages priced between $10 and $120 per month, the company has cultivated a thriving community of over 10 million users on Discord.
In May, 2023, Midjourney released Niji-journey V5, a drawing model specifically curated for anime and manga styles. This version, features exceptional modeling tension, color utilization, and rich stylization expression and positions itself as a game-changer in the digital art landscape. The incorporation of stylization parameter settings empowers users to draw inspiration from various artists’ design styles, facilitating the creation of “master-level” works of art.
Furthermore, Holz and his dedicated team are actively developing new versions with improvements. On December 21, 2023, Midjourney V6 was released. This iteration marked a significant achievement as the company introduced a web-based version for the first time. Holz anticipated that this release represents the highest-quality AI tool developed to date, maintaining Discord support while enhancing accessibility through the web.
Beyond static images, Midjourney’s ambitions are vast. The team is currently focused on elevating their platform to generate video and 3D assets. Holz predicted in August 2022 that the platform would achieve the capability to generate real-time content at 30 frames per second in high resolution within two years. Looking further ahead, by 2030, Midjourney aims to push boundaries by enabling the generation of entire video games through their innovative AI technology.
