Yahoo acquires AI news app Artifact from Instagram co-founders a year after shutdown

In a strategic move aimed at bolstering its news aggregation capabilities, Yahoo has snapped up Artifact, an AI news app founded by Instagram co-founders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom. The acquisition, announced jointly by the two companies, signals Yahoo’s intent to leverage Artifact’s advanced AI technology to enhance its offerings to its vast readership, numbering in the hundreds of millions.

Launched a few years ago, Artifact was designed to revolutionize news recommendations but failed to gain significant traction. Nonetheless, Yahoo sees immense potential in its underlying AI technology to differentiate itself in the crowded landscape of news aggregators.

Unlike typical acquisitions that involve absorbing talent, Yahoo is focusing primarily on Artifact’s technology rather than its team. While Krieger and Systrom will serve as “special advisors” to Yahoo, they won’t be joining the company directly. The remaining members of Artifact’s team are either transitioning to other roles or taking a hiatus. Financial details of the acquisition remain undisclosed.

“Today Yahoo announced that it has acquired Artifact, the AI-driven news aggregation and discovery platform created by Instagram cofounders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app, 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. The technology Artifact has created will be even more impactful with the scale of the Yahoo News network, ranked the #1 news and information property in the US in 2023,” Yahoo said in a news release.

The acquisition comes on the heels of Artifact’s closure announcement about three months ago, where Systrom and Krieger cited insufficient market potential for their decision. However, despite initially opting to move on without actively seeking buyers, interest from various companies prompted a reconsideration. Yahoo, in particular, stood out to them due to its commitment to news and personalized content.

“We built an intuitive product experience that users love and has the opportunity to benefit millions of people. 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,” said Kevin Systrom, CEO and Co-Founder of Artifact. “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.”

Kat Downs Mulder, the general manager for Yahoo News, highlighted Artifact’s meticulous approach to content categorization and recommendation systems as a key asset. With Yahoo boasting over 185 million monthly visitors to its news platform, the acquisition promises to expose Artifact’s technology to a significantly broader audience than it could have achieved independently.

For Systrom, the integration with Yahoo represents an opportunity to witness the fruition of Artifact’s potential at scale. He remarks, “Every month, we would chip away at growth, and we would get to the scale where some of the things we were promised in machine learning and AI would start working because we had just enough scale to make them work. But it was really hard to move that needle.” Integrating with Yahoo, though gradual, is expected to propel Artifact’s technology forward in a substantial manner.

In a message posted on its website titled, “A Farewell and a Hello,” Artifact wrote:

“To our Artifact Users and Partners,

We’ve already shared our decision to wind down operations of the Artifact app. You may have noticed that we kept our core news reading capability running a bit longer than planned – until April 2nd. While Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app or site, the proprietary AI-powered personalization technology and other features will live on and be integrated across Yahoo, including in Yahoo News, in the months to come. We think the technology Artifact has created will be even more impactful with the scale of the Yahoo News network, ranked the #1 news and information property in the US in 2023.”

Below is a screenshot of the entire message.