In response to this meme image of a wizard holding an orb, featured in the ICE book “Middle-earth: Valar and Maiar,” the Midjourney founder joked that the new hardware form factor could be an orb.
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Midjourney, a company best known for its powerful AI image generation tools, has announced that it is “going into hardware” and is inviting job seekers to join its new hardware division.
The company shared the announcement on its official X account today.
Midjourney founder David Holz previously worked for hardware companies and was CTO at Leap Motion. A few months ago, he hired Ahmad Abbas, who worked with him at Leap Motion. Abbas also worked at Apple for five years as a hardware manager, working on the Vision Pro headset. His LinkedIn profile lists his current title as “Head of Hardware, Midjourney.”
It's still unclear what devices Mid-Journey will develop, but the X account posted a number of tweets today that give internet sleuths a hint at what exactly the company's plans are. For example: Posts Following a recent spate of failures of pendant-style AI hardware devices, the company said the device “is not meant to be a pendant.”
company Tweeted When asked about details about the device, the company said it had “multiple initiatives underway.” attention “There's definitely an opportunity for more form factors.”
If you really want to stretch yourself, take a look back at a fact Holtz tweeted a few months ago:We make orbs“This is a response to an X-user joking that someone should make a device with a spherical form factor inspired by wizard spheres in fantasy tales, like Saruman's Palantir from Lord of the Rings.”
In case it wasn't obvious, both Midjourney and Holz have frequently made teasing and poking fun at X, so it's probably best not to read too much into what they say other than a promise to produce some hardware.
There's no set timeline, so it may be a while before we know what's going to happen. For now, Midjourney is just one of many companies trying to figure out what AI-driven hardware might look like.
