Artifact

Artifact was the second act for Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, an AI-driven news reader that launched in early 2023 and used machine learning to rank stories, summarize articles, and flag clickbait headlines. Critics praised the personalization, but the app never found a large enough audience: the United States accounted for 44 percent of downloads and no other country topped 4 percent. In January 2024 the founders announced they were winding it down, concluding the market opportunity was not big enough to justify continued investment. The product limped along for a few weeks before its underlying technology was sold to Yahoo that April and folded into a revamped Yahoo News. The standalone Artifact app, the thing users actually held, was finished.

Founded

2023-01

Shut down

2024-01-12

Funding raised

Undisclosed

Years alive

1

Founders

Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger