Midjourney's Matrix moment: David Holz unveils a full-body health scanner — the first of eight products
Key takeaways from Core Memory Podcast's report on the Midjourney event where founder and CEO David HolzDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → unveiled the company's first hardware, as recounted by hosts Ashlee Vance and Kylie Robinson (19 June 2026):
A full-body health scanner from an image-AI company. At a semi-exclusive San Francisco event of roughly 250 people, Holz unveiled a device that performs a "crazy 3D scan" of the body to check on your health — a striking pivot for the company that helped kick off the AI image-generation wave.
The first two of eight planned products. Holz said the scanner is one of eight products Midjourney intends to ship — four hardware and four software — with the scanner and an accompanying "spa" being the first two revealed, and the rest apparently coming over the course of the year.
Built on Butterfly ultrasound chips. The scanner arranges a large number of ultrasound chips (the hosts counted around 40 in one segment) from Butterfly Network — Jonathan Rothberg's portable-ultrasound company, whose CEO was present — in a 360-degree array around the body, reportedly throwing off terabytes of data per scan.
"Very Matrix-y." A roughly two-minute demo video showed a person standing on a platform and being lowered into a pool of water for imaging — pitched as far faster than a conventional MRI and framed as something you would do in a spa, complete with sauna and cold plunge, rather than a hospital.
Self-funded, no venture capital. The hosts noted Holz self-funded Midjourney, took no venture capital and has "been printing money ever since" — giving him the freedom to spend on ambitious, seemingly off-topic bets like medical imaging.
A BCI may be next. Party chatter suggested one of the unannounced products could be a brain-computer interface, though the hosts were sceptical Midjourney could pull off a BCI given how much specialist talent the field demands; a founder of Merge Labs was reportedly among the attendees.
Star-studded crowd, hiring push. Figma's Dylan Field joked from the audience about being "uploaded to the Matrix," and a big part of Holz's pitch was a call to hire strong engineers. One key scientist behind the full-body ultrasound work, Caltech's David Garrett, had reportedly just left to start his own research organisation.
Source: Core Memory Podcast with Ashlee Vance — 19 June 2026.
