Artifact Never Shut Down and Now It May Keep Going

The makers of the AI-powered personalized news app Artifact said in January that they would shut down the service at the end of February. But it’s the end of March, and Artifact is still churning out news every day. What happened?

“It takes a lot less to run [Artifact] than we had imagined,” Artifact cofounder Kevin Systrom told TechCrunch. “It will still likely go away, but we’re exploring all possible routes for it going forward.”

I had recommended Artifact in My Favorite New Apps of 2023 (Premium) in late December, noting my years-long search for a news reader app that didn’t suck. As it turns out, Artifact may literally be too good to be true: Just two weeks later, its makers—Artifact was founded by Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger—announced that “the market opportunity wasn’t big enough to warrant continued investment,” so they’d be shutting it down.

I was asked about this in Ask Paul that month and I expressed my hope that an outside company might step in and simply keep Artifact going. (I’ve also started using Flipboard again, it’s not the same as Artifact, but it’s the only news reader app I’ve found that even close.) But Systrom confirmed that one reason the service is less expensive to run now is that only him and Krieger are left. And while the two apparently self-funded Artifact to the tune of “single-digit millions” of dollars, it appears they’re ready to keep going if it makes sense.

I still read Artifact every day. It will be a sad day if it ever does disappear.