Yahoo Acquires AI News Aggregation App Artifact From Instagram Cofounders
Yahoo has acquired Artifact, the AI-driven news aggregation platform created by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the company announced on Tuesday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
While Krieger and System will be working with Yahoo in an “advisory capacity” during the transition, they won’t be joining the company permanently. Yahoo is after Artifact’s tech, not its staff.
According to a press release, the platform will no longer operate as a standalone product, but “the proprietary AI-powered personalization technology and other features will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app, in the months to come,” signaling a shift towards AI integration across the company’s products.
The acquisition comes just a few months after Krieger and Systrom announced that they would be shutting down the platform writing, “We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big enough to warrant continued investment in this way.”
“Yahoo was one of the first to combine human and algorithmic curation of news. Since then, the landscape of machine learning and personalization has changed dramatically and Artifact has innovated with best-in-class technology to meet the moment,” SVP and general manager of Yahoo News Kat Downs Mulder said in a statement. “Artifact has become a beloved product and we’re thrilled to be able to continue to grow that technology and further our mission of becoming the trusted guide to digital information and the best curator connecting people to the content that matters most to them.”
“AI has allowed us to give users a better experience discovering great content they care about. Yahoo recognizes that opportunity, and we could not be more excited to see what we’ve built live on through Yahoo News,” Systrom wrote in a statement. “Yahoo brings the scale to help the product achieve what we envisioned while upholding the belief that connecting people to the trusted sources of news and information is as critical as ever.”
The acquisition closed on March 29.
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