NEW YORK, June 18, 2026, 15:08 EDT
- Butterfly Network jumped over 50% at one point after Midjourney said it built a full-body ultrasound scanner from Butterfly modules.
- The deal brings back focus to a five-year licensing and co-development agreement that could mean as much as $74 million in expected payments for Butterfly.
- This is still an early story—regulatory clearance, commercialization, scaling up production, and milestone payments are all unresolved.
Butterfly Network shares surged over 50% Thursday as Midjourney put out new info about a full-body scanner that runs on Butterfly’s ultrasound chips. The trading move followed from a licensing deal already made public, with the announcement bringing new focus to the medical-imaging stock.
The stock jumped 52.7% to $8.72 in recent trading, with volume around 43.3 million shares. Shares opened at $7.48 and hit an intraday high of $8.73, market data showed. Market cap is about $2.24 billion.
Why it matters: Butterfly has been working to show it can do more than sell handheld ultrasound probes to hospitals and doctors. The Midjourney project is a real-world case where Butterfly Embedded, its chip-licensing and co-development unit, is getting used outside regular point-of-care ultrasound.
Butterfly said its current Midjourney scanner prototype has 40 Butterfly Ultrasound-on-Chip imaging modules in each system. The company describes Ultrasound-on-Chip as its approach to putting ultrasound transducer tech on semiconductor chips, not just using traditional piezoelectric crystal probes. Chief Executive Joseph DeVivo said the roadmap was a “potentially meaningful commercial opportunity.” Business Wire
Butterfly’s November filings already showed the commercial side. Midjourney is set to pay a $15 million up-front fee and a $10 million a year license fee for five years. There’s another $9 million possible for meeting milestones, and more if there’s revenue sharing or chip purchases if Midjourney uses Butterfly chips in hardware.
Midjourney’s scanner remains mostly an early-stage project, not a finished medical device. The Verge said the ultrasound-based machine uses a ring of sensors to scan the body in about 60 seconds. Midjourney wants to have 10 scanners up and running at a San Francisco spa before 2027 is out, according to the report. FDA approval would be needed for medical use, while the first applications focus on body-composition mapping.
Butterfly’s jump makes sense from a trading stand point, though it’s tougher to gauge where the stock settles on valuation. The company showed off a prototype scanner with 40 modules—a number investors can latch onto. Butterfly also said new versions might have even more modules. So the focus now moves from Butterfly selling more probes to whether its chip tech can layer in as a supplier for new imaging gear.
Butterfly said first-quarter revenue came in at $26.5 million, up 25% on the year. Gross margin climbed to 68.9%. The company stuck with its 2026 revenue outlook of $117 million to $121 million and sees a full-year adjusted EBITDA loss of $21 million to $25 million. Adjusted EBITDA strips out interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, and some other items.
Competition is tough. Big names like GE HealthCare, Philips and Siemens Healthineers dominate the wider ultrasound market. Butterfly is aiming to differentiate by focusing on handhelds, software, AI and chip licensing, instead of just traditional ultrasound systems.
But Thursday’s rally could be factoring in a long payoff too soon. The Midjourney deal has milestones and commercialization steps built in, not only flat fees. The scanner still has hurdles with regulatory sign-off, how much buyers want it, actual use in clinics, privacy of data, and whether Butterfly can deliver enough modules at scale.
The next step is for management to lay out the numbers and timing on the opportunity, but without relying mostly on vision. Investors got a concrete data point. The end market is still not proven.
