Yahoo Acquires Artifact, an AI-Powered News App by Instagram's Co-Founders

Yahoo has officially announced its acquisition of Artifact, an AI-powered news app developed by Instagram's co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. As a result of the acquisition, Artifact will cease to operate as a standalone app, and its advanced AI-powered personalization technology will be integrated across Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app in the upcoming months.

Artifact posted on its website:

A Farewell and a Hello

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.

To learn more, please read about this new chapter here. Thank you to all who have joined us on this adventure we call Artifact. Can’t wait to see how the technology we’ve built lives on through Yahoo.

— The Artifact team

This acquisition comes after Artifact had previously announced plans to wind down its operations due to insufficient market opportunities. The technology behind Artifact is designed to deliver tailored news content, leveraging AI to adjust to users' preferences over time, thereby providing a personalized news feed. Additionally, the app incorporated various AI tools such as news summarization, headline rewriting, and content curation. Yahoo aims to leverage these capabilities to enhance its content experiences and personalized news delivery.