Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram and recently co-founder of the personalized news app Artifact—which was acquired by TechCrunch’s corporate parent, Yahoo!—has joined Anthropic as its inaugural Chief Product Officer (CPO).
In his new role as CPO, Krieger will be responsible for overseeing Anthropic’s product engineering, management, and design, as the company aims to broaden its array of AI applications and extend the reach of its generative AI technology, Claude. Krieger’s responsibilities will encompass both consumer-facing projects, such as the newly released Claude mobile app, and enterprise services, subscriptions, and software offerings.
“I have always admired Anthropic’s unwavering dedication to developing capable and trustworthy AI systems that augment human capabilities and push the boundaries of what is possible with technology,” Krieger said in a statement. “I am excited to join the outstanding team at Anthropic and to collaborate on designing and scaling transformative products like Claude. The potential for AI to make a positive global impact is tremendous, and I am confident that Anthropic has the talent, principles, and technology to bring that potential to fruition.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also expressed enthusiasm about Krieger’s appointment: “Mike is a phenomenal engineer, builder, and leader. His expertise in creating user-friendly products and experiences will be invaluable as we develop new ways for users to engage with Claude, especially within workplace settings. We are fortunate to bring Mike’s vision and expertise into our leadership team.”
Krieger and Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s other co-founder, exited Instagram in 2018, several years after Meta (then Facebook) acquired the platform for $1 billion. In January 2023, the duo launched Artifact with the goal of developing recommendation systems to aggregate and suggest news articles, topics, and authors, fostering community interaction through likes and comments.
While Artifact had initially announced plans to wind down operations in early 2024, the company was acquired by Yahoo! in April for an undisclosed sum. Following the acquisition, Krieger served in an advisory role alongside Systrom, but that collaboration appears to have concluded.
Krieger’s hiring comes shortly after Anthropic’s competitor, OpenAI, showcased an improved, more conversational experience for its AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT. This also followed Google’s preview of significant upgrades to its Gemini chatbot technology at the company’s I/O developer conference. Evidently, Anthropic is eager to make a strong push into the consumer market, and it believes that Krieger is the ideal leader to spearhead these efforts.
