midjourney is now building medical scanners.

gm.

big week of strange directions. an AI image generator is now building medical hardware. meta and western union both bet on solana for stablecoin payments. and a US-iran deal got signed but immediately wobbled.

the US and iran signed a 14-point peace framework on june 19 in geneva. the strait of hormuz status is now contested. the US says it's open (17 million barrels transited saturday). iran says it's closed.

israel and hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire late friday after a week of strikes in southern lebanon. it's holding so far, though both sides have accused the other of violations.

oil came down about 8% on the week. WTI in the mid-$70s, brent in the low-$80s.

1. midjourney is pivoting to medical scanning.

midjourney (the AI image company) announced midjourney medical on june 17, including a full-body ultrasound scanner and a san francisco "scanning spa" opening late 2027. the launch videos hit 13 million views in about 14 hours.

the tech is real but early. the machine uses licensed ultrasound-on-chip technology from butterfly network. it does full-body scans with no radiation. the eventual pitch is faster, safer, less expensive scans than MRI or CT. the catch: today's prototype takes about 20 minutes (not the 60 seconds the marketing implies), they've scanned about 12 people total, and there's no FDA clearance yet.

founder david holz (ex-leap motion) bootstrapped midjourney to roughly $500 million in annual revenue with no venture capital. he's now putting that cash flow into medical hardware.

2. meta and western union both picked solana for stablecoin payments.

meta expanded its USDC creator payout program to use solana and polygon as its two settlement rails (via stripe's bridge infrastructure). the program launched in colombia and the philippines and is rolling out to 160+ markets by year-end.

western union announced its own stablecoin called USDPT, also on solana, in partnership with anchorage digital bank. it'll power a consumer remittance product called "stable by western union" in 40+ countries.

shopify went a different direction. their 2026 USDC integration is EVM-only (ethereum, base, arbitrum, optimism, polygon). no solana.

real-world stablecoin payments are quietly becoming infrastructure. two of the largest consumer platforms in the world just made their choice.

3. the peace dividend that almost was.

the US-iran framework got signed june 19, but the strait of hormuz remains contested. iran's military says it's closed. the US says it's open. JD vance flew to switzerland june 21 for follow-on talks. the deal isn't dead but it's strained.

the more durable good news: israel and hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire late friday after a week of strikes in southern lebanon. it's holding so far. some of the energy-driven inflation pressure has eased.

then there's the fed. last week's FOMC was warsh's first meeting as chair. rates held steady but markets are now pricing in a 25 basis point hike by october, a major shift in just weeks. when warsh said "this committee will deliver price stability" in his first press conference, he wasn't betting on a clean iran resolution. that hedge looks smarter after watching the deal wobble all weekend.

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apple is raising prices because there isn't enough memory.

tim cook told the wall street journal last week that apple is raising iphone prices due to a memory chip shortage. the cause: the AI buildout is consuming so much memory (every data center training a frontier model needs it) that consumer device makers are getting outbid.

this is the AI infrastructure story finally showing up in a place normal people will notice. people who don't follow capex announcements from anthropic and meta will notice when their next iphone costs more. memory chip makers like kioxia (just passed toyota as japan's most valuable company) and SK hynix are the winners.

higher is becoming a markets terminal.

new this month: a hyperliquid leaderboard that tracks the top 100 traders on the platform, ranked by PnL across 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or all-time. click any wallet to see their full position book, perp equity, holdings, and live activity.

it lives alongside our perps and spot pages, our prediction markets page, our news feed, and an earnings calendar. the goal is one screen for everything you actually want to track.

there's always a bull market somewhere.

see you thursday.

not financial advice. aggregated community trends and commentary.