This Midjourney company profile covers the company's valuation, revenue, funding rounds, investors and history. Midjourney works in artificial intelligence, with a focus on AI image and video generation. It was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. Every figure links to a public source, and anything the company hasn't disclosed is marked as such.
Revenue
| Metric | Value | As of | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Estimated revenue | About US$500 million in 2025, up from about US$300 million in 2024 (third-party estimates, not company-reported) | 2025 | Latka |
| Outside funding | None; self-funded since founding | 2025 | Sacra |
Funding history
No funding rounds recorded from reliable sources.
Midjourney timeline
Key dates from the sources on this page, oldest first. Metric snapshots are listed after the funding events.
- 2021 — Midjourney is founded in San Francisco by David Holz.
- 2025 — Estimated revenue: About US$500 million in 2025, up from about US$300 million in 2024 (third-party estimates, not company-reported).
- 2025 — Outside funding: None; self-funded since founding.
Investors
Not disclosed.
Overview
Midjourney is one of the world's most popular AI image generators, known for producing striking, artistic images from short text prompts. Millions of people, from hobbyists and illustrators to designers, marketers and filmmakers, use it to create concept art, illustrations, product mock-ups and visual ideas. It has expanded into video generation and an editor for refining images. Midjourney is also one of the most unusual companies in AI: it has never raised outside venture capital, operates with a small team and, by most estimates, earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subscription revenue.
David Holz founded Midjourney in San Francisco in 2021 and describes it as an independent research lab. Holz previously co-founded Leap Motion, a hand-tracking technology company. He started Midjourney to explore new mediums of thought and imagination, and deliberately chose not to take investor money, keeping full control over the company's direction.
Products
- Image models: successive versions, with V7 released in 2025, producing increasingly detailed, coherent and controllable images.
- Video: a video model launched in 2025 that animates images into short clips.
- Web editor: tools for editing, extending and remixing images, plus style references and personalisation that learn a user's aesthetic preferences.
- Discord and web apps: Midjourney started on Discord, where users typed prompts in chat channels, and later launched a full web interface.
A bootstrapped business
Midjourney earns revenue from monthly and annual subscriptions, with tiers based on generation speed, volume and privacy features. Because it never raised venture capital, it funded its computing costs and research from subscriptions from the start, and Holz said in 2022 that the company was already profitable with a very small team. Third-party trackers estimate revenue at about US$300 million in 2024 and about US$500 million in 2025; these figures aren't company-reported, so we show revenue as not disclosed in the fact tiles and list the estimates separately. Headcount estimates range from roughly 100 to 200 people, extraordinarily lean for a company of its revenue. Without a funding round, there's no official valuation; estimates based on revenue multiples are speculative.
The Meta partnership
In 2025, Meta announced a partnership with Midjourney to license its image and video generation technology for use in Meta's future models and products. The deal gave Midjourney a major new source of revenue and validated its technology, while Midjourney said it would remain independent and community-focused.
Lawsuits
Midjourney faces copyright litigation. In 2023, a group of artists sued Midjourney and other image generator companies, alleging their work was used to train models without permission. In 2025, Disney and Universal sued Midjourney, alleging that it generated images of their copyrighted characters, and other studios later followed with similar claims. Midjourney has argued that training on publicly available images is lawful. The outcomes could shape how all image generators train models and what users may create.
Competition
Midjourney competes with OpenAI's image generation in ChatGPT, Google's Imagen and Gemini image models, Adobe Firefly, Black Forest Labs' Flux models, Stability AI, Ideogram, Leonardo (owned by Canva) and video tools such as Runway. Its advantages are its distinctive aesthetic quality, loyal community and focus on creativity, while competitors often offer image generation bundled into broader products.
Midjourney at a glance
Midjourney is a San Francisco AI image and video generator founded in 2021 by David Holz, who also co-founded Leap Motion. It has never raised outside funding. Third-party estimates put its revenue at about US$500 million in 2025. It licensed its technology to Meta in 2025 and faces copyright suits from artists and Hollywood studios.
Timeline
- 2021: founded by David Holz as an independent research lab.
- 2022: opens its Discord-based beta; grows rapidly as AI art goes viral.
- 2023: releases V5 and V6 with major quality improvements; artists file a copyright suit.
- 2024: launches a full web interface.
- 2025: releases V7 and a video model; announces a licensing partnership with Meta; Disney and Universal file suit.
Why bootstrapping worked
Most AI companies raise huge sums because training frontier models is expensive. Midjourney focused on a specific product, image generation, where model training costs are lower than for large language models, and it charged users from early on. Strong word-of-mouth growth on Discord meant it needed little marketing. By keeping the team small and focused, it turned subscription revenue into profit. Our guide to the largest bootstrapped companies compares Midjourney with other startups that grew without venture capital, such as Surge AI.
AI art and the creative industries
AI image generators have transformed how concept art, advertising visuals and illustrations are made, and they have divided the creative community. Some artists use them as tools for brainstorming and production; others see them as threats to their livelihoods, built on their work without consent. Clients increasingly ask whether images are AI-generated, and platforms and stock image sites have introduced labelling rules. Licensing deals and legal outcomes will determine how sustainable current business models are.
Questions for creative professionals
- What commercial rights does your plan give you over generated images?
- Could generated images resemble copyrighted characters or styles in ways that create legal risk?
- Do your clients accept AI-generated work, and how should it be disclosed?
Who uses Midjourney
Midjourney's users span a wide range. Concept artists and illustrators use it to explore ideas quickly before refining them by hand. Marketing teams create mood boards, campaign concepts and social media visuals. Game developers and filmmakers use it for early visual development and storyboards. Architects and interior designers explore styles and layouts. Hobbyists make art for fun, and its community shares prompts and techniques. The breadth of this audience is one reason its subscription revenue has grown without heavy marketing.
How subscription pricing works
Midjourney offers several monthly and annual plans. Higher tiers include more "fast" generation time on dedicated GPUs, unlimited slower generations, private ("stealth") mode so images aren't shown publicly, and the ability to run more jobs at once. Video generation consumes more of a user's allowance than images. Companies above a certain revenue level must use higher-tier plans to use images commercially, according to its terms. This model ties revenue directly to usage and computing costs, which helps keep the business profitable.
Independence as strategy
Without investors, Midjourney doesn't face pressure to grow at any cost, sell to a larger company or go public. That lets it pick its own research priorities and pace, but it also means it can't draw on large venture rounds if competition requires sudden heavy spending on computing.
Latest developments (October 2026)
Midjourney's copyright litigation continued in 2026. Disney and Universal sued in June 2025, Warner Bros. Discovery followed, and the cases were consolidated in November 2025, according to IBC; no trial date had been set. The studios' complaint cited roughly US$300 million in 2024 revenue. Midjourney remains bootstrapped with no outside funding.
What to watch
Watch the outcomes of copyright lawsuits, new model and video releases, the Meta partnership's effect on revenue, and any change to Midjourney's independent, investor-free structure.
Takeaways
Creators can produce high-quality visual concepts quickly but should check rights carefully. Founders can learn from Midjourney's profitable, focused bootstrapping. Investors should note there's no official valuation, only revenue estimates.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from the public sources below. Where sources disagreed, we used the company's own announcement or a primary news report. Private-company data changes; check the date beside each figure.
Frequently asked questions
What does Midjourney do?
Midjourney is a artificial intelligence / ai image and video generation company headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. It was founded in 2021.
What is Midjourney's valuation?
Midjourney has not publicly disclosed a valuation in the sources we track.
How much revenue does Midjourney make?
Midjourney is a private company and has not publicly disclosed its revenue. Figures on third-party sites are usually modelled estimates rather than numbers reported by the company.
Who founded Midjourney?
Midjourney was founded in 2021 by David Holz.
Is Midjourney a public company?
No. Midjourney is a private company (private, founder-owned (no outside funding)), so its shares are not traded on a stock exchange and it isn't required to publish its financial results.
Where is Midjourney headquartered?
Midjourney is headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States.