In response to this meme image of a wizard with a ball from the ICE book Middle Earth: Valar and MaiarThe founder of Midjourney joked that the new hardware form factor could resemble a sphere.
ICE
Midjourney, a company best known for its robust AI-based image generation tool, has publicly announced that it is “entering the hardware industry” and has invited job seekers to apply for a position in its new hardware division.
The company made the announcement today on its official X account.
Midjourney founder David Holz previously worked at a hardware company; he was CTO of Leap Motion. A few months ago, he hired Ahmad Abbas, with whom he had worked at Leap Motion. Abbas also worked as a hardware manager at Apple for five years, working on the Vision Pro headset. His LinkedIn profile now lists his current title as “Head of Hardware, Midjourney.”
Nothing is known yet about what kind of device Midjourney will develop, but this X-account posted numerous tweets today that could give internet sleuths some insight into the exact plans. For example, published that the device “will not be a trailer,” following a recent series of failed trailer-like AI hardware devices.
The company tweeted that there were “several efforts underway” when asked for further details about the device and noticed that there are “definitely opportunities for more form factors.”
If you really want to try hard, you can look back at the fact that Holz tweeted months ago: “we will make the ball” in response to another X-user's joke that someone should make a device with a spherical form factor inspired by magic spheres from fantasy stories, like Saruman's Palantír from The Lord of the Rings.
In case it's not obvious, both Midjourney and Holz have been so busy teasing and trolling at X that you probably shouldn't read too much into their statements other than that they're committed to producing some sort of hardware.
There's no timeline, either, so it could be a while before we see what happens. At this point, Midjourney is just one of many companies trying to figure out what AI-powered hardware will look like.