Artificial intelligence image generation company Midjourney Inc. announced today on X Inc. that it’s getting into hardware and is looking to add new members to its team to assist in the endeavor.

Exactly what hardware Midjourney is planning on building is not clear. AI image generation companies aren’t normally prone to venture into hardware construction. But the market itself is still relatively young, so maybe it’s a matter of: Why not?

VentureBeat reported that some clues about what Midjourney might be considering building can be found among its existing talent. Midjourney’s founder and head, David Holz, was previously a co-founder of and chief technology office at Leap Motion.

Leap Motion was an early, well-funded startup in the virtual and augmented reality space that, despite grand ambitions and even a reported acquisition offer from Apple Inc., ran out of money and sold in a fire sale for $30 million in 2019. Later incarnations of Leap Motion, now known as Ultraleap, tried focusing on commercial offerings but found only limited success.

Also hired by Midjourney in December as “head of hardware” was Ahmand Abbas, who, along with previously working at Leap Motion, spent five years at Apple working on the Apple Vision Pro.

With the backgrounds of both Holz and Abbas, the possible hardware device could very well be something in the AR and VR market, although it’s an odd tangent given that Midjourney is an AI image-making company. The company has previously said that it was moving into 3D, video and real-time generation models and there’s possibly some potential for crossover there: A generative AI video model could be leveraged to generate VR experiences, for example.

Whatever is planned, Midjourney is having some fun teasing what it might be. In response to various comments on X, Midjourney said it is not going to be a pendant, and when asked if it will be wearable, the response was, “Is it wearable if you have to go inside of it?”

In another reply on X, Midjourney wrote, “We aren’t announcing anything specific yet, but we have multiple efforts in flight,” suggesting that the company could have several hardware projects in mind.

Whatever it’s planning to build, it will require money, and Midjourney is a rare breed of startup: It’s entirely bootstrapped and the company has never raised any venture capital funding. With a team of only 40 people, the company brought in an impressive $200 million in revenue in 2023. But building hardware is expensive, and with the company now hiring for ambitious plans, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Midjourney seeking to raise venture capital in the coming months.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram