On April 2, Yahoo said it had acquired Artifact – an AI-based news platform developed by the co-founder of Instagram.
Yahoo, which also owns news sites TechCrunch, Engadget and Yahoo Finance, said Artifact’s AI-integrated recommendation engine and other features will help Yahoo scale its news and content offerings. personalized for readers.
It is known that Yahoo also owns shares in content recommendation platform Taboola. In 2021, Yahoo was acquired by private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion.
The new deal shows the continuing difficulties for media startups, with Big Tech like Alphabet and Meta attracting the lion’s share of advertising revenue.
Previously in January, Artifact said it would stop operating the application because “the market opportunity is not large enough to warrant continued investment in this way”.
Artifact was launched by entrepreneurial couple Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in early 2023. Previously, they founded and then sold the photo sharing application Instagram to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012.
This pair of entrepreneurs left Meta at the end of 2018 due to disagreements with Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg about the vision for Instagram.
Systrom and Krieger will work with Yahoo as consultants during the transition, Yahoo said in a statement.