OpenAI Rival Anthropic Taps Instagram Co-Founder as Product Head

May 16, 2024

24 1 minute read

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(Bloomberg) — Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic hired Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger to be its new product chief, part of a broader push to bring its AI services to more users and businesses.

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Krieger, who previously served as chief technology officer at Meta Platforms Inc.-owned Instagram, will oversee Anthropic’s product engineering, product management and design functions, the company said in a blog post on Wednesday. Krieger will help “expand our suite of enterprise applications and bring Claude to a wider audience,” the company said.

Founded by ex-OpenAI employees in 2021, Anthropic has emerged as a primary rival to the ChatGPT maker by focusing on developing AI responsibly. Like OpenAI and other AI companies, Anthropic has also increasingly focused on selling its chatbot, Claude, to businesses in an effort to monetize the emerging technology.

“Mike’s background in developing intuitive products and user experiences will be invaluable as we create new ways for people to interact with Claude, particularly in the workplace,” Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic, said in the blog post.

Krieger and Kevin Systrom founded Instagram in 2010 and sold it to Meta, then Facebook, two years later. After leaving Facebook, the co-founders launched Artifact, a personalized news app. Last month, Artifact was acquired by Yahoo.