Meta Makes a Big Splash with Midjourney Licensing Deal! Zuckerberg Scores Another Win in AI Arms Race
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Silicon Valley giant Meta has made another major move! Meta's Chief AI Officer Alexander Wang announced on Threads this Friday that the company has reached a technical licensing agreement with AI image generation unicorn Midjourney, signaling another acceleration in Meta's artificial intelligence strategy.
Wang stated that Meta's research team will collaborate deeply with Midjourney to integrate the latter's advanced technology into future AI models and products. He emphasized: "To ensure Meta can provide users with the highest quality product experience, we must adopt a comprehensive strategy. This means we need world-class talent, an ambitious computing power roadmap, and close cooperation with industry leaders."
This partnership comes as timely support for Meta. The competition in AI image and video generation has become increasingly fierce, with OpenAI's Sora, Black Forest Lab's Flux, and Google's Veo all demonstrating strong capabilities. Although Meta launched its own AI image generation tool Imagine last year and integrated it into products like Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, while also possessing the video generation tool Movie Gen, it still needs stronger support to face the intense competition.
Image credit: Generated by AI, image licensed from Midjourney
This licensing deal is just the latest move in Meta's AI arms race. Earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched an unprecedented talent war in AI, offering compensation packages as high as $100 million to some researchers. Not only that, the social media giant also invested $14 billion in Scale AI and acquired AI voice startup Play AI.
It's reported that Meta has also held discussions with several other top AI labs regarding potential acquisitions. Zuckerberg even discussed with Elon Musk about joining his $97 billion bid to acquire OpenAI, though Meta ultimately didn't participate in the offer, and OpenAI rejected Musk's acquisition proposal.
While specific terms of the Midjourney deal haven't been disclosed, Midjourney CEO David Holz clarified on platform X that the company remains independently operated with no external investors. This makes Midjourney one of the few top AI model developers that has never accepted external funding. According to Upstarts Media, Meta had indeed considered directly acquiring Midjourney previously.
Founded in 2022, Midjourney quickly rose to prominence in the AI image generation field with its realistic and unique artistic style. By 2023, the startup's annual revenue was estimated to reach $200 million. Midjourney operates on a subscription model, with basic plans starting at $10 per month and premium plans offering more image generations for up to $120 monthly. In June this year, the company released its first AI video model, V1.
Notably, Meta's partnership with Midjourney comes as the latter faces legal challenges. Two months ago, Disney and Universal Studios sued Midjourney, alleging it used copyrighted works to train its AI image models. Several AI model developers, including Meta, face similar allegations, though recent court cases involving AI training data have mostly sided with tech companies.
The conclusion of this cooperation agreement undoubtedly adds significant leverage for Meta in the next round of AI competition and signals that the wave of consolidation in the artificial intelligence field is accelerating.