Midjourney Wants to Scan Your Body. Diagnosis Isn’t Included.

David Holz announced an astrology acquisition in July while planning a spa that will scan your body. His company, Midjourney, reportedly generated $300 million in 2024.¹ Selling images has given him room to pursue something considerably more intimate.

The medical vision reaches far beyond the first product, which is intended to measure body composition, not diagnose disease.

The promise is bigger than the product

In its June launch essay, Midjourney imagines a future where early imaging could avoid 30% of deaths and 50% of healthcare costs.⁸ Those are speculative possibilities for early imaging broadly, not demonstrated benefits of its scanner. The essay supplies no supporting outcomes study for those estimates.

That is an enormous amount of hope to hang over a product that starts with a map of your fat and muscle.

The competition is cheap and fast

That map already has a market price. BodySpec sells DEXA scans, a common benchmark for body composition, that take 6 to 11 minutes²⁶ and cost $40 with a membership²⁷. Gym bioimpedance machines such as InBody finish in 15 seconds to two minutes.²⁸ Midjourney reports its prototype takes 20+ minutes, against a final goal of one minute.⁹

Scan time sets the economics. At 20 minutes, one scanner serves at most three customers an hour; near the one-minute goal, the scan itself stops being the bottleneck. Both figures are company statements, and there is more than a year to close the gap before the planned late-2027 opening. Until then, the scanner has to win on what its images show. Avoiding X-rays is a thin edge: BodySpec puts its DEXA dose at about four bananas' worth.²⁶

Selling the visit

A body scan is not a health outcome; somebody still has to decide what to do next.

That decision is where the business gets uncomfortable. Midjourney describes a spa people would visit even without a scanner, with scans becoming incidental to the experience.⁸ The company could succeed at making customers return before establishing that repeated scans improve their health. That distinction matters whenever the health story helps sell the visit.

The Co-Star acquisition fits this consumer ambition.²¹ Holz says Banu Guler and her team will strengthen product and design across Midjourney.²⁰ Building an experience people want to return to is useful expertise. It does not settle what their body data means.

If the scan finds something

If a future version starts flagging possible disease, somebody must interpret the finding, arrange follow-up and carry the cost. The American College of Radiology warns that whole-body MRI screening of people without symptoms or relevant risk factors can generate unnecessary investigations without established life-extension benefits.^15,16 That is MRI evidence, not a verdict on this ultrasound device. It explains why a faster scan cannot, by itself, complete the healthcare job.

The case for Holz

Holz has a serious answer to the skeptics. He previously built hardware at Leap Motion.¹⁹ Butterfly Network's annual filing confirms Midjourney paid $15 million upfront for ultrasound technology.^10,11 Midjourney openly limits the initial use and reports ethics oversight for volunteer image collection.⁹ That oversight protects research participants; it is not independent performance validation.

Narrowing the first product is sensible. The problem is asking a narrow product to carry such a vast health narrative before it publishes evidence supporting that narrative.

What to watch next

Before the planned late-2027 opening, look for independent evaluation of body-composition accuracy. Any later diagnostic or health-benefit claim needs evidence for that expanded use. The useful milestone is a result a customer can act on with justified confidence.

When Holz opens the spa, watch what the scan lets a customer decide.