The 3 big things in Spirit Tech this week

Astrology app Co-Star was acquired by AI image lab Midjourney in its first-ever acquisition, with founder Banu Guler becoming Midjourney's new Chief Design Officer

Co-Star, the social astrology app, is where 4.3 million users go to make sense of themselves and their relationships, generating birth charts, checking compatibility with friends, and reading horoscopes blended from NASA data, human astrologers, and AI. Acquisition terms were undisclosed, and the deal quietly closed in spring. Midjourney, the AI image generator, is a lean, profitable lab with more than $200M in revenue but no app of its own, its models living on the web and in Discord. CEO David Holz says Guler's two-dozen-strong team will help build Midjourney's first real apps, starting with image generation. Set against a push into hardware and even medical body scanners, this is an AI engine buying the consumer body it never had: a product team, a beloved brand, and a front door to users, and with it a first stake in the meaning layer of users' lives. It signals a new exit opportunity for Spirit Tech. Whether that meaning survives new ownership is the open question, and here the answer looks reassuring: Co-Star stays under its founder, Guler, whom Holz has known for five years over a shared interest in how people reflect and make decisions. Midjourney is mission-driven ("expanding the imaginative powers of the human species") and subscription-funded, not a solely engagement-focused machine. The harder test, and why the Spirit Tech Collective presses the governance question, comes when a less aligned buyer makes the next acquisition.

The American Counseling Association added Insight Timer to its Strategic Partner Network, opening a B2B channel straight to working clinicians

The world's most popular free meditation app is already a between-session staple for 125,000 clinicians worldwide, who hand clients its free audio and worksheets to build grounding, regulation and coping skills between appointments. Its edge is the library behind that: 300,000+ resources, all made by real practitioners with no ads and nothing AI-generated, and pre-vetted so busy clinicians aren't hunting for what to recommend. Insight Timer has leaned into that clinician market, launching a free Therapist Hub last October with shareable resource folders and a therapist directory. The success with this clinician base is why the ACA, the largest body of professional counselors with 62,000+ members, has now made the partnership official, its CEO Brian Banks calling Insight Timer's free between-session resource "well aligned with our strategic goal of providing high-quality resources to counselors." The takeaway for Spirit Tech: professional associations are valuable gatekeepers to clinical distribution, gating on ethics and mission-fit rather than size (they've onboarded early-stage startups too). If you're looking to tackle that B2B side, earn your way in with high-quality, practitioner-made content and real clinician tooling.

Nottingham researchers published the first validated scale measuring mindful technology use at work and its protective effects on wellbeing

The downsides of our always-on digital workplaces are familiar: technostress, overload, burnout. Less obvious is that how you engage with your devices, not just how much, is itself a protective, trainable skill the researchers call Digital Mindfulness. The 15-item Digital Mindfulness Scale, published in Computers in Human Behavior, puts a number on it, across three dimensions: using devices on purpose (intention), holding focus against distraction (attention), and meeting digital frustration with self-compassion rather than self-criticism (attitude). Across two surveys of roughly 400 UK employees a month apart, higher scores predicted lower technostress and exhaustion and better well-being a month later, over and above a person's general disposition to mindfulness. Crucially, the researchers frame the capacity as cultivable from two sides: Individual habits like setting an intention before reaching for a device, and Organizational moves like availability norms and "right to disconnect" policies. This is the opening for Spirit Tech: a validated yardstick to test whether a well-being initiative actually works, and a design brief for tools that support healthy use rather than erode it, aimed at the individual or sold to the employer.

Company Spotlights

• Metawise: AI-powered meditation and lucid dreaming app with live EEG brainwave tracking.
• Sabba Collective: AI simulation and education infrastructure training the psychedelic-assisted therapy workforce, serving university faculty, clinicians, and clinics.

Explore our Spirit Tech Organizations directory, a living map of 450+ orgs we track and update weekly.

New Jobs This Week

• Senior Product Designer @ Co–Star: Design the product behind the astrology app that blends NASA planetary data with writing from astrologers and poets. Remote or hybrid (SF/NY) · $200k–$285k.
• Principal Product Owner @ Insight Timer: Report to the CEO building products that help 25,000 teachers earn through courses and mentoring on the meditation platform. Remote (Australia-based).
• Partnerships Designer @ Calm: Craft the decks, mockups, and brand assets behind Calm's partnerships and licensing work. New York · $95k–$148k + equity.

Browse the Spirit Tech jobs board for more roles, or to post one at your organization.