Mike Krieger, one of Instagram's founders-and, more recently, cofounder of personalized news app Artifact, acquired just last week by Yahoo's corporate parent-is now joining Anthropic as the company's first chief product officer.

Krieger will lead product engineering, management and design for Anthropic's suite of AI apps, the company said, as it looks to bring its generative AI technology, Claude, to a wider market. Consumer-facing work such as the recently launched Claude app for mobile aside, Krieger also will oversee Anthropic's enterprise services, subscriptions and software offerings.".

"I've long admired Anthropic's relentless focus on building capable and trustworthy AI systems that empower humans and expand what's possible with technology," said Krieger in a statement. "I'm thrilled to join the exceptional team at Anthropic and partner with them to design and scale transformative products like Claude. The potential for AI to positively impact the world is immense, and I believe Anthropic has the talent, principles and technology to help realize that potential."

Outgoing Chief Executive Officer, Dario Amodei, said, "Mike is a world-class engineer, builder, and leader. His work in developing highly intuitive products and user experiences will be invaluable as we continue to create new ways for people to interact with Claude, particularly in the workplace. We feel extremely fortunate to add Mike's vision and expertise to our leadership team.".

Krieger—along with Kevin Systrom, Instagram's other co-founder—has left Instagram in 2018 several years after Meta (then Facebook) had acquired the social media platform for $1 billion. He and Systrom teamed up to launch Artifact in January 2023 aimed at developing recommender systems that aggregate and suggest news articles, topics and authors, and allow the larger community to like and comment on that content.

But April saw Yahoo acquire Artifact for an undisclosed sum. Krieger has advised Systrom since the acquisition; that advisory role will end, apparently.

Krieger's hiring comes just days after the rival Anthropic demoed a more conversational, polished experience for ChatGPT, its AI-powered chatbot platform, and after Google previewed major upgrades to its Gemini chatbot tech at the tech giant's I/O developer conference. It seems that Anthropic is keen to go aggressively after the consumer market too-and in it, it believes it has the right person.