Yahoo acquires Artifact, the AI-powered news app from Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the company was announced on Tuesday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app, and its AI-powered personalization technology will be integrated into Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app in the coming months. Yahoo is the parent company of TechCrunch.
Systrom and Krieger will work with Yahoo in an “advisory capacity” during this transition.
The announcement comes just months after Artifact said it would wind down operations as the market opportunity was not large enough to justify continued investment. Although Artifact started out as a simple news app, the end result looked more like a Twitter replacement. There is already a lot of competition in this space with many competitors including Meta’s Threads.
Artifact’s technology displays content that users want to see and becomes more in tune with their interests over time. As a result, users get a personalized feed of news they want to read. The app also included several AI tools to summarize news, rewrite clickbait headlines, and display the best content. Yahoo says that integrating these capabilities into its portfolio “accelerates the opportunity to connect users with an even richer content experience and personalized personalization.”
“Artifact has become a beloved product, and we’re excited to continue to develop this technology and advance our mission to be the trusted digital information guide and best curator that connects people to the content that matters most to them.” , he said. Kat Downs Mulder, SVP and General Manager of Yahoo News, in a press release.
Systrom said in the press release that Artifact’s technology has the opportunity to benefit millions of people and that “Yahoo is bringing the scale to help the product achieve what we envisioned while supporting the belief that connecting people to trusted sources news and information is as critical as ever.”
