Midjourney is not VC backed. They have a bit about this in the article:
reply> As a reminder, Midjourney has no investors. We are a totally new kind of research lab. We've seen academic, corporate, and government labs - but we are a distinct (and curious) new thing: we are a community-backed research lab.
Yeah sure. That's not going to be a sustainable model. Once the tech is available and money is to be made, lots of for-profit alternatives will appear with marketing and lobby budgets that will take over the market.
replyRemember Open AI was a non-profit at some point. Look at how that turned out.
I know the founder through a lot of light discussion. If lots of for-profit alternatives become serious competition, he'd rather move on to something else than take on VC money. His POV is that he already has more money than he ever wanted. All he wants now is to do fun research.
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