Yahoo has acquired Artifact, the news aggregation and recommendation app developed by Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Following the acquisition, Artifact’s standalone operation will be discontinued, and its AI personalization technology and other capabilities will be integrated into Yahoo News and related products in the coming months.
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Although the financial details of the deal remain undisclosed, the acquisition was completed last week. During the transition period, Systrom and Krieger will serve in advisory roles to Yahoo. Interestingly, Yahoo is also the parent company of Engadget.
Systrom expressed his excitement about the acquisition in a press release, emphasizing the opportunity for AI-driven content discovery. He stated, “Yahoo recognizes that opportunity, and we could not be more excited to see what we’ve built live on through Yahoo News.”
Artifact, launched in January last year, attracted users with its robust story discovery system and personalized news feed powered by AI technology. Despite incorporating features like social elements and news summaries, Artifact struggled to achieve the same level of success as Instagram.
In January, Systrom and Krieger decided to close down Artifact due to its inability to attract a sufficiently large user base. However, they continued managing its operations until the acquisition by Yahoo.
Notably, this isn’t Yahoo’s first acquisition of an AI-driven news summarization app. Over a decade ago, Yahoo acquired Summly, which was subsequently shut down, and its technology was integrated into other Yahoo products.
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