Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger moves to lead Anthropic’s AI incubator

Mike Krieger will report to Anthropic President Daniela Amodei and co-lead the Labs team alongside product engineering lead Ben Mann.

By  Storyboard18| Jan 14, 2026 9:47 AM
Before joining Anthropic, Krieger co-founded Artifact, a news recommendation tool later acquired by Yahoo. He is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Instagram, the world’s largest photo-sharing app, which he scaled to over 800 million monthly users—making it one of the fastest-growing apps of all time.

Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, is stepping down from his role as Chief Product Officer at AI safety and research company Anthropic to co-lead the company’s internal incubator, known as Labs, which focuses on building experimental AI products, according to media reports.

Krieger will report to Anthropic President Daniela Amodei and co-lead the Labs team alongside product engineering lead Ben Mann. Meanwhile, Amid Vora, Anthropic’s Head of Product, will take over Krieger’s responsibilities and collaborate closely with CTO Rahul Patil to scale the company’s Claude AI model across both enterprise and consumer markets.

Launched in mid-2024, the Labs unit is now expanding into a full-fledged incubator, with plans to double its team headcount within the next six months, the reports added.

Before joining Anthropic, Krieger co-founded Artifact, a news recommendation tool later acquired by Yahoo. He is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Instagram, the world’s largest photo-sharing app, which he scaled to over 800 million monthly users—making it one of the fastest-growing apps of all time.

During his tenure as Instagram’s co-founder and CTO, Krieger also expanded the engineering team to over 450 members within Facebook.

Krieger holds a bachelor’s degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

First Published onJan 14, 2026 9:47 AM

SPOTLIGHT

Special CoverageCalling India’s Boldest Brand Makers: Entries Open for the Storyboard18 Awards for Creativity

From purpose-driven work and narrative-rich brand films to AI-enabled ideas and creator-led collaborations, the awards reflect the full spectrum of modern creativity.

Read More

“Confusion creates opportunity for agile players,” Sir Martin Sorrell on industry consolidation

Looking ahead to the close of 2025 and into 2026, Sorrell sees technology platforms as the clear winners. He described them as “nation states in their own right”, with market capitalisations that exceed the GDPs of many countries.