Butterfly Wings & VR Futures
This past week, a cryptic deal between unexpected partners—healthcare and generative AI—signaled this shift. Few noticed. Even fewer understood the implications.
On November 17, Butterfly Network (BFLY), the handheld-ultrasound pioneer, announced a five-year co-development and licensing agreement with Midjourney, one of the most influential AI image-generation labs. Midjourney will pay Butterfly a $15 million upfront fee and $10 million annually for access to its ultrasound-on-chip platform and software—plus milestone payments and revenue-sharing tied to future hardware.
BFLY's public filing regarding it's Co-Development and Licensing Agreement with Midjourney, Inc.
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Butterfly originally designed their chip to collapse a cart-sized imaging machine into a handheld probe. Their system is a spatial sensor, not just a medical component. Midjourney is licensing the platform for next-generation sensing and spatial understanding. This deal marks Butterfly’s shift to a sensing platform for AI at the edge.
Why This Deal Matters
Butterfly’s ultrasound-on-chip adds depth, motion and sensing (even through surfaces) that cameras alone can’t achieve, expanding spatial computing’s perception, eventually enabling richer VR environments.
Midjourney’s R&D roadmap envisions next-generation models for video and 3D environment generation, building towards—as CEO David Holz referenced in internal 2024 “Office Hours” commentary—"holodeck-like” worlds. Within that arc, the Butterfly–Midjourney partnership represents an early step toward VR systems that can perceive the world, generate environments and respond in real time.
David Holz speaks onstage during the 2013 SXSW Music, Film + Interactive Festival on March 9, 2013 in Austin, Texas. Holz would eventually found Midjourney in 2021. (Photo by Bobby Longoria/Getty Images for SXSW)Less
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Midjourney hasn’t disclosed what exactly they’re developing. My speculation: whatever launches will integrate acoustic, visual and other sensors to blend people, AI agents and objects seamlessly into VR environments. Perception, intelligence and experiences at the VR edge.
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