Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger at Web Summit 2015. Image: Web Summit (CC by 2.0)
Krieger helped grow Instagram into a massive social media site and will now use his experience to support the growth of Anthropic’s chatbot Claude.
OpenAI challenger company Anthropic has appointed Mike Krieger – the co-founder of Instagram – as its chief product officer.
In this new role, Krieger will oversee Anthropic’s product engineering, product management and product design efforts. Krieger’s role will also see him help the company as it works to bring its AI chatbot Claude to a wider audience.
Krieger is well-known in the tech sector as the co-founder and CTO of Instagram. He helped grow the company’s engineering team to hundreds of staff and helped grow Instagram to a massive audience.
Instagram was sold to Meta (then Facebook) in 2012 for $1bn, but its co-founders – Krieger and Kevin Systrom – remained at the company until 2018. The two entrepreneurs launched a new venture last year called Artifact, which was initially described as a TikTok for news. But Artifact entered a sector full of stiff competition when it launched. As a result, it shut down earlier this year.
Krieger expressed excitement at his new role with Anthropic and said he has long admired the company’s “relentless focus on building capable and trustworthy AI systems”.
“I’m thrilled to join the exceptional team at Anthropic and partner with them to design and scale transformative products like Claude,” Krieger said. “The potential for AI to positively impact the world is immense, and I believe Anthropic has the talent, principles and technology to help realise that potential.”
Krieger has joined Anthropic at an interesting time, as the company just launched its Claude chatbot in Europe and Ireland, boosting its available audience.
“Mike is a world-class engineer, builder and leader,” said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. “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. We feel fortunate to add Mike’s vision and expertise to our leadership team.”
Find out how emerging tech trends are transforming tomorrow with our new podcast, Future Human: The Series. Listen now on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger at Web Summit 2015. Image: Web Summit via Flickr (CC by 2.0)
