(Yahoo News) – Yahoo said on Tuesday it has acquired Artifact, an AI-driven news platform co-founded by the co-founders of Instagram, and will integrate its technology into the American web services provider’s news and other sites.

This deal signals pain for struggling media startups trying to increase revenue at a time when tech giants like Alphabet and Meta attract a large portion of advertising sales.

In January, the company announced in a blog post that it would shut down its app because “the market opportunity isn’t significant enough to justify continued investment.”

Yahoo, which owns news brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, and Yahoo Finance, stated that Artifact’s AI-driven recommendation engine and other features would help enhance its news operations and provide personalized content to its audience.

The online publisher also has a minority stake in the content recommendation platform Taboola.

Yahoo, which refused to share financial details, was acquired by private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion in 2021.

The Artifact was launched by Sistrum and Mike Krieger at the beginning of 2023. They were previously with Meta after the company’s acquisition of Instagram in 2012, which was known as Facebook at the time.

Both of them parted ways with the owner of Facebook at the end of 2018, which was later attributed by some media reports to tension-filled relations with Mark Zuckerberg and differences in their vision for Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

Yahoo stated in a statement that Systrom and Krieger will work with Yahoo during this transition in advisory capacities.