Midjourney is not VC backed. They have a bit about this in the article:

> 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.

Remember Open AI was a non-profit at some point. Look at how that turned out.