Midjourney Medical audaciously promises a revolution in whole-body scanning, powered by Butterfly Network chips. Can the reality ever match the hype?

Editor’s Note: I am indebted to Stuart Miller of Haverin on Substack for the initial and later follow up (linked below)  articles on this, plus our exchanges. Feel free to read his first essay first and return here for a further discussion of both Midjourney Medical and Butterfly Network, plus his second article referenced in Part 2.

Part 1: Midjourney Medical and the Prototype Scanner

Can the reality match the hype that’s jumped the rails? Midjourney Medical is a new company (or division) that grew out of Midjourney, a organization claiming to be a “community-funded lab of 60 people known for building the most beautiful AI models in the world”. Moving past the breathless prose, Midjourney Medical has developed a prototype of a whole-body scanner that, unlike present CT scanners and MRIs, does two major things: it fully scans the body in a minute and there is no radiation. The methodology is almost Star Trek-ian: your body is lowered gently into a circular tank of warm water, and 40 chips arrayed in a ring generate waves that change shape when they meet parts of your body (e.g. from skin to fat to muscle to bone).  The waves generated by the chips are translated into  ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) creating a 3D map of a human body, with the completion goal at 60 seconds of scanning and computing time.

This is coming from a 1st generation prototype. The images in the announcement video are supposedly not AI-generated but actual from about a dozen subjects. The actual timing is about 20 minutes at present, a real time not in the announcement but in articles (see below), and the subjects were uniformly slim.

Yet it’s audacious as all get-out, in a time drowning with incrementalism and no Big Next Thing.

If the results from the prototype are real and the timeline/vision are achievable, the potential is stunning. Being lowered briefly into a tank of water is a far more pleasant experience than the tube and noise of an MRI, though for claustrophobics or just those afraid of being submerged in water, the fears are similar. If taken to its logical development, it could, in fact, threaten the business of nearly all of the mainline MRI/CT scan companies such as GE Healthcare, Philips, Siemens, and Canon if it is medically validated and gains FDA clearance.

As Stuart Miller pointed out and described well in his article, there is already an FDA-cleared water/sensor array for USCT used as a diagnostic adjunct for dense breast mammography–SoftVue, developed by Delphinus Medical Technologies of Novi, Michigan. So there is precedent, one already in place and accepted in mainstream medical practice. A device that every woman would accept as standard instead of current.

However, breast scanning does not go through bone (e.g. ribs) nor gas (lungs), which is USCT’s drawback. At present, when ultrasound is used, a trained technician has to work the device between the ribs a millimeter at a time to gain an unblocked view, not in 60 seconds but taking 60 minutes or more.

Midjourney Health’s ambitions are wellness, not medical grade, at least into 2028. The announcement states that this prototype is the first of three.

• Their roadmap is that by end of 2027, Midjourney’s will open a 24/7 medical spa in San Francisco, with the 2nd generation prototypes providing detailed body composition maps for clients, accumulating data for its own case, scanner development, and yes, FDA.
• 2028 would introduce a 3rd generation scanner with custom chips and a ‘night-and-day’ change in image quality and scan times.
• The trajectory is opening proprietary medical spas, staying within ‘general wellness’ permitted by FDA, and gaining acceptance of the technology.
• Ultimately, by 2031, the plan is “to have a fleet of over 50,000 scanners worldwide – with a total scanning capacity of a billion scans a month”. The rationale: early imaging without symptoms>>change in lifestyle>>avoidance of 30% of deaths and 50% of healthcare costs.

Mr. Miller’s skepticism in his article is well presented and warranted. He details that ultrasound can’t go through bone and gas, dunking has psychological and physical drawbacks such as consistently clean water, the ability to run spas at scale, the business drawbacks of no reimbursement, no billing codes, no FDA validation. Unless it is priced well, the Midjourney vision of a pop-in spa and wellness checks  will be confined to the early adopters and the affluent curious privately paying up to thousands of dollars for the experience, much as whole-body MRIs, also in the ‘general wellness’ category away from FDA scrutiny, are today. Can spas support 50,000 scanners? Not likely.

It all sounds rather vague and glossy in a song that this Editor has heard before in the digital health (IBM Watson Health circa 2012) and concierge practice areas.

What is also scarce in this announcement is that once you have this information, what do you do with it? Is it conclusive enough to take to a physician and do follow up?  Or if lifestyle, will these spas affiliate with clinicians who can do the counseling? From the Forbes article on the announcement:

“Whole-body screening of people with no symptoms turns up incidental findings in 20% to 40% of scans, yet only a small fraction ever require treatment, as University of Michigan radiologists have noted. At a billion scans a month, even modest rates imply hundreds of millions of ambiguous results a year, each one demanding a clinical decision and producing a worried customer.”

In the category of ‘it does what it says it does”–a must in generating credibility for a new technology–false positives or even ambiguity are killers.

Since Midjourney Medical is a separate community-backed research lab, they are seeking support from the ‘community’ and not, at this point, explicitly seeking investors. There are reports that the company generates hundreds of millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue, according to Mobihealthnews. Their substantial funding needed for development, chips, and spas has to come from somewhere, and this vagueness about their funding disturbs this Editor.

What Midjourney Medical has in spades is strong skills in generating press coverage. Besides Stuart Miller’s Substack article on 19 June, Mobihealthnews published their take the same day, along with a wave of articles over the next ten days from Radiology Business to Fox News’ Cyberguy to Futurism. The Verge’s 23 June critique proved to be a lengthy deflation. While it presented Midjourney’s side by interviewing their head of medical Tom Calloway, the bulk of the article consisted of far more critical comments from several imaging and radiology professionals. Matthew Davenport, a professor of radiology at the University of Michigan Medical School, said that (FTA) published images were “interesting” and that he could see a market for body imaging. But the company’s “claims are wildly unsubstantiated, perhaps the most grandiose” he has seen. William Morrison, a radiology professor at Thomas Jefferson University, was downright scathing calling it a “vibe-based rollout” and (FTA) that the whole move, he said, has the feel of an ad campaign. “It makes me think that this may be more of a grift than a pivot.” Words like “grandiose” and “grift” tend to stick. 

Part 2: Butterfly Network, Their Chips, and the Agreement with Midjourney

Midjourney Medical had a partner in this which, interestingly, was not mentioned in the announcement. Our Readers may be familiar with the name Butterfly Network. It’s a company we covered extensively from 2018 when point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) was being revolutionized by less expensive handheld units feeding into mobile software, powered by a new design of capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers (CMUTs) that are integrated into semiconductors. They are now up to their third generation iQ3 ultrasound device with improved imaging while continuing to market the second generation iQ+ handheld across multiple medical specialties and veterinary medicine. Their software to analyze images is a SaaS subscription model. Butterfly Networks also prominently offers on its website its software development kit (SDK) to developers and to providers, third-party software through its AI Marketplace. 

What they don’t publicize other than one website page, indexed in ‘About Us’, is Butterfly Embedded–selling the Ultrasound-on-Chip, the unique silicon that makes the iQ work. The Midjourney deal was revealed through a Form 8-K SEC filing published last November. Butterfly Network disclosed a Material Definitive Agreement with Midjourney, Inc., which gave them a non-transferable, limited license for the Ultrasound-on-Chip technology, software, and backend technology. From the filing: as part of a five-year agreement, Midjourney paid a one-time non-recurring fee of $15 million and a $10 million annual license fee plus (i) additional payments of up to $9 million upon the achievement of specified milestones, (ii) certain revenue sharing payments in connection with Midjourney’s commercialization of hardware products incorporating Company chips, and (iii) payments in connection with any purchases of chips from the Company.

This is no small change for Butterfly Network. It not only boosted their bottom line but also their long-languishing share price. BFLY went public in a 2021 SPAC that cracked hard by 2023, dropping in 18 months from a debut at $19/share to $2.42 and fell even lower to the dollar range where it stayed for most of 2024, with losses to match. It flirted hard with the Devil of Demise that claimed many SPAC’d companies, yet survived under changed management, despite a roller-coaster 2025-early 2026.

With the Midjourney announcement, the stock went up to the $8 range, double from May. This was aided by Butterfly’s own announcement of the deal, interestingly as “commentary” on Midjourney’s announcement. It positioned it as a collaboration enabled by Butterfly Embedded, Ultrasound-on-Chip licensing, and a co-development business initiative. The release preceded an Emerging Growth Webinar with TD Cowen, which was fortuitous timing indeed.

A week later, Butterfly announced a second Embedded deal with Aleph Neuro for what they termed the “highest-resolution 3D images of the human brain taken from outside of the skull” without drilling or MRI. Aleph is a pure research lab and did not present a growth business case. The only two previous chip/Embedded deals featured on their website dated back to 2023: Mendaera and Forest Neurotech.

Pulling On The Loose Threads

My comment on Stuart Miller’s first Substack was around Butterfly’s ability to scale production of the chip for the prototypes and the projected 2027 rollout. I also noted that Butterfly never took off as we in digital health had expected. It had strong press, financial backing, and a unique technology, yet mainline companies with piezoelectric ultrasound didn’t jump to buy Butterfly when they could have for a tuck-in price, nor did providers jump to adopt it.

His second article, The Med Tech Company Behind the Midjourney Scanner, pulled on my ‘loose thread’ and showed why Butterfly ultrasound handhelds, despite their advanced technology, didn’t have a chance–how acceptance by hospitals and clinicians was a long uphill slog that an upstart company could not win against GE Healthcare, Philips, Siemens, etc. They all now have their own handhelds to mobiles. As I put it in another comment, no one gets fired for buying any of those three. Butterfly’s POCUS moat, dug deep on CMUT, has filled in to be shallow and narrow as far as providers are concerned.

With the Aleph and Midjourney deals, Butterfly with Embedded has now pivoted to the very, very sexy chip space. A luster that may help out their main POCUS business but functionally gives them an entirely new revenue stream. The company broke over the past week a heavy ad schedule on X and LinkedIn for the new iQ3, now on sale and with some attractive discounts. They’re taking advantage of strong positive news and being seen in a different light, their unique chip covered with a golden glow at last. Butterfly is also being touted by various stock pickers as a hot, undervalued buy, with estimated earnings from the Midjourney deal perhaps $74 million over five years. Here’s an example on X from CK Capital. 

Instead, what should grab your attention are two short sentences in the Midjourney announcement (that doesn’t mention Butterfly) that Mr. Miller points out:

“In 2028, we’ll start scaling to more cities, and we’ll upgrade to a 3rd generation scanner. Gen3 is where it gets ‘serious,’ the silicon for this design will be completely custom, and image quality and scan times will be night-and-day.”

2028 is within the five-year agreement. Yet he poses certain logical questions that should be plain to any investor.

• Are the Butterfly chips only a bridge until Midjourney finds or develops something better on its own?
• Suppose Midjourney finds a more powerful or connected chip partner?
• What happens if Butterfly can’t scale production for the 2nd generation?
• Is the deal that Butterfly will be the custom chip designer–or not?
• And the killer-diller–Will the Midjourney scanner even make it to Gen3?

Will Butterfly be able to leverage these (at long last) good times into increased POCUS sales–more importantly, a buyout or a go-private with fresh investors? Stay tuned.