Yahoo Is Acquiring Artifact, Folding It Into Yahoo News
Also from David Pierce at The Verge:
The two sides declined to share the cost of the acquisition, but
both made clear Yahoo is acquiring Artifact’s tech rather than its
team. Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, Artifact’s co-founders, will
be “special advisors” for Yahoo but won’t be joining the company.
Artifact’s remaining five employees have either gotten other jobs
or are planning to take some time off.
The acquisition comes a bit more than a year after Artifact’s
launch and about three months after Systrom and Krieger
announced its death. “We have built something that a core
group of users love,” the co-founders wrote in January,
“but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big
enough to warrant continued investment in this way.” They said
that the biggest reason to shut down was in order to focus on
“newer, bigger and better things that have the ability to reach
many millions of people.” The bet behind Artifact was always that
AI had the potential to be a huge, internet-changing technology;
maybe there were just more interesting things to work on than a
news app without a big news audience. […]
Artifact, the app, will go away once the acquisition is
complete. But Artifact’s underlying tech for categorizing,
curating, and personalizing content will soon start to show up
on Yahoo News — and eventually on other Yahoo platforms, too.
“You’ll see that stuff flowing into our products in the coming
months,” says Downs Mulder. It sounds like there’s also a good
chance that Yahoo’s apps might get a bit of Artifact’s speed and
polish over time, too.
“Yahoo, where scrappy startup acquisitions go to thrive”, said no one, ever.
★
Also from David Pierce at The Verge:
The two sides declined to share the cost of the acquisition, but
both made clear Yahoo is acquiring Artifact’s tech rather than its
team. Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, Artifact’s co-founders, will
be “special advisors” for Yahoo but won’t be joining the company.
Artifact’s remaining five employees have either gotten other jobs
or are planning to take some time off.
The acquisition comes a bit more than a year after Artifact’s
launch and about three months after Systrom and Krieger
announced its death. “We have built something that a core
group of users love,” the co-founders wrote in January,
“but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t big
enough to warrant continued investment in this way.” They said
that the biggest reason to shut down was in order to focus on
“newer, bigger and better things that have the ability to reach
many millions of people.” The bet behind Artifact was always that
AI had the potential to be a huge, internet-changing technology;
maybe there were just more interesting things to work on than a
news app without a big news audience. […]
Artifact, the app, will go away once the acquisition is
complete. But Artifact’s underlying tech for categorizing,
curating, and personalizing content will soon start to show up
on Yahoo News — and eventually on other Yahoo platforms, too.
“You’ll see that stuff flowing into our products in the coming
months,” says Downs Mulder. It sounds like there’s also a good
chance that Yahoo’s apps might get a bit of Artifact’s speed and
polish over time, too.
“Yahoo, where scrappy startup acquisitions go to thrive”, said no one, ever.