Midjourney Reveals Its First Hardware Project, the Orb You Walk Inside

Midjourney just announced it will reveal its first hardware project at a live, in-person launch event in San Francisco. The announcement is deliberately cryptic: no product name, no specs, no price. Just a livestream invite, a few remaining slots for attendees, and one tantalizing hint from the team: "it's not what you expect" and "you can go inside of it." That last detail has sent the AI creative community into full speculation mode.

Two Years in the Making

This moment has been building quietly since late 2023. In August 2024, Midjourney announced it was entering the hardware space, hiring Ahmad Abbas , former Hardware Engineering Manager on Apple's Vision Pro and a former colleague of CEO David Holz at Leap Motion , to lead the new division. The project was informally nicknamed "Orb" inside the company.

In a March 2026 interview, Holz disclosed that Midjourney was exploring a small hardware project, informally called "Orb," led by Holz and Abbas, both former Leap Motion engineers. Holz indicated that the program could conceivably require Midjourney's first outside capital , a notable departure for a company that has rejected venture capital for five years.

Engineer Cheng Lou noted that the hardware has already been visible daily inside the office and will reach the public soon , suggesting this is not a vaporware announcement but a real, physical object that exists today.

The "You Can Go Inside" Clue

The most revealing hint in the announcement thread is the response to a curious follower: "no egg this time , but you can go inside of it." That single phrase rules out wearables, pendants, and handheld devices. It points toward something room-scale or at minimum large enough to physically enter , think an immersive display booth, a spatial computing pod, or a walk-in generative environment.

The exact plans for the project, informally called "Midjourney Orb," are not yet known, but it might be designed for AI-generated 3D worlds and real-time generated video games. Holz has previously described Midjourney's image model as a "really slow game engine" and spoken about volumetric 3D worlds generated at 60 frames per second as a long-term ambition , a vision that would require dedicated hardware to experience properly.

The clues stack up into a coherent picture: an immersive, spatial experience you physically step into, powered by Midjourney's generative models in real time. Whether it's a prototype installation, a consumer product, or something in between is what tomorrow's livestream will answer.

Why Holz Is the Right Person to Build This

With Leap Motion, Holz co-founded a hardware startup for hand-tracking technology that was technically impressive but commercially difficult. The sale to Ultraleap in 2019 closed that chapter. But the lessons from that experience , supply chain complexity, the gap between prototype and product, the importance of timing , are exactly what a second hardware attempt needs.

As a hardware engineer who worked with Abbas at Leap Motion, it is expected that Midjourney's hardware projects will be centered on new and kinesthetic technologies. The company's foray into hardware is consistent with its ongoing work on AI models for videos and 3D content creation.

The Strategic Logic

Midjourney has always played by its own rules. The San Francisco-based company has annual recurring revenue of $200 million with a team of less than 100 employees and is estimated to be worth $10 billion. That financial independence , no VC board, no quarterly pressure , is what makes a long-horizon hardware bet possible.

The strategic case for hardware is strong:

• Defensibility: Hardware could deepen user lock-in, create a moat competitors can't easily replicate, and serve professional creatives who are willing to pay for purpose-built tools.
• Full-stack ownership: A device tightly coupled to Midjourney's models means switching to a competitor's image generator also means abandoning the hardware , a fundamentally different retention dynamic than software alone.
• The premium creative market: Midjourney's user base skews toward professional creatives , concept artists, designers, filmmakers , who already spend real money on Wacom tablets, calibrated monitors, and high-end cameras. The willingness to pay for purpose-built tools is real.
• Spatial computing timing: With Apple Vision Pro on the market and spatial computing maturing, a device that bridges AI-generated visual content with immersive spatial output is coherent with where the industry is heading.

What This Means for the Industry

Midjourney plans to announce hardware-related projects soon. These are expected to include experimental items that are not consumer products, with ongoing initiatives for users to receive updates. The goal is to increase transparency regarding projects other than image generation. That framing , experimental, not a consumer product , matters. This is likely a statement of direction and a prototype reveal, not a product you can buy tomorrow.

But the signal it sends is significant. If Midjourney , a profitable, self-funded, sub-100-person company , can credibly ship a novel AI hardware experience, it validates the entire category of purpose-built AI creative hardware. It raises the stakes for Adobe, Canva, and every other software-first creative platform that has no physical answer.

The project has been described internally as something "unusual," "unexpected," and desired by many users. Given Midjourney's track record of non-obvious moves , launching through Discord when everyone else built web apps, staying private when competitors raised nine-figure rounds , the unusual framing is worth taking seriously.

What Comes Next

The livestream airs tonight at 6pm PT from San Francisco. The team recognizes user frustration regarding uncertain timelines, and Midjourney management prefers to discuss ongoing work openly, even without exact release dates. So expect a reveal of what the project is, with a timeline that is likely measured in months rather than days.

Meanwhile, the software roadmap continues in parallel. V8.1 is smarter, more coherent, better at detailed prompts, and renders text better than ever. With HD mode enabled, it renders at twice the size and 4x the resolution of V7 images, with images appearing in only 4 seconds in SD and 12 seconds in HD. V8.2 and a next-generation editing model are also in the pipeline for the near term.

The hardware announcement does not change what Midjourney is today , the best AI image generator most creatives have ever used. What it changes is the question of what Midjourney could become: not just a tool you use, but a space you enter.