Yahoo has just acquired the artificial intelligence startup Artifact, a news personalization platform created by the founders of Instagram, the American Kevin Systrom and the Brazilian Mike Krieger.
The value of the deal was not revealed.
According to Yahoo, the machine learning technology developed by Artifact will be incorporated into its news services and websites.
Yahoo owns brands such as TechCrunch, Engadget and Yahoo News, as well as a stake in Taboola, the programmatic media platform.
According to Reuters, the deal shows the difficulty for media companies to increase their advertising revenue in the face of the dominance of Alphabet, owner of Google, and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram.
Artifact launched its app in January last year with the aim of combating the spread of fake news and misinformation on social media. The name refers to articles, artificial intelligence and facts.
The startup was funded solely by the founders’ money, who sold Insta for US$1 billion in 2012, two years after the app’s launch. Both continued with the company until 2018.
Artifact, however, never took off and last January the application was taken offline. Systrom and Krieger said in a company blog post that “the opportunities in this market are not large enough to sustain investment.”
After announcing the end of the business, however, the two began to be approached by companies interested in an M&A. Systrom said more than 10 companies reached out to the founders, who ended up with Yahoo.
Giuliano Guandalini