Mike Krieger

Mike Krieger
Born	Michel Krieger 4 3, 1986
Birthplace	São Paulo, Brazil
Nationality	Brazilian-American
Occupation	Software engineer, entrepreneur, technology executive
Employer	Anthropic
Known for	Co-founder of Instagram
Education	Stanford University (BS, MS)

Michel "Mike" Krieger (born March 4, 1986) is a Brazilian-American software engineer, entrepreneur, and technology executive who co-founded the photo- and video-sharing social network Instagram alongside Kevin Systrom in 2010. As Instagram's chief technology officer from its founding until his departure in 2018, Krieger oversaw the platform's technical architecture as it scaled from a small startup to a global service with over one billion monthly active users. The company was acquired by Facebook (now Meta Platforms) in 2012 for approximately $1 billion, one of the most consequential acquisitions in the history of social media. After leaving Instagram, Krieger reunited with Systrom to launch two further products—the COVID-19 tracking site Rt.live and the AI-powered news application Artifact. Since 2024, Krieger has served in a senior leadership role at the artificial intelligence safety and research company Anthropic, where he has led product development and, more recently, the company's internal incubator known as Anthropic Labs. In 2025, Time magazine named Krieger to its list of the 100 Most Influential People in AI.

Early Life

Mike Krieger was born Michel Krieger on March 4, 1986, in São Paulo, Brazil. He grew up in São Paulo, one of the largest and most cosmopolitan cities in Latin America. Krieger developed an early interest in technology and computing during his youth in Brazil. He later relocated to the United States to pursue higher education, a move that would place him at the center of Silicon Valley's technology ecosystem during a period of rapid innovation in social media and mobile computing.

Details about Krieger's family background and childhood remain largely private. What is publicly documented is that his upbringing in Brazil shaped a global perspective that he would later bring to the design and development of Instagram, a platform that became one of the most internationally used social media services in the world.

Education

Krieger attended Stanford University, where he earned both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree. Stanford's proximity to Silicon Valley and its robust computer science and engineering programs provided Krieger with both the technical foundation and the professional network that proved instrumental in his entrepreneurial career. It was at Stanford that Krieger met Kevin Systrom, with whom he would go on to co-found Instagram. The connections Krieger formed during his time at Stanford—with fellow students, faculty, and the broader Bay Area technology community—were significant factors in the trajectory of his career.

Career

Founding of Instagram

In 2010, Krieger and Kevin Systrom co-founded Instagram, a mobile application designed for sharing photographs enhanced with digital filters. The app launched on Apple's iOS platform in October 2010 and attracted rapid adoption. Krieger served as the company's chief technology officer, responsible for the engineering and technical infrastructure underlying the platform.

The application's emphasis on simplicity, visual communication, and mobile-first design resonated with users at a time when smartphone adoption was accelerating worldwide. Instagram's user base grew from zero to millions within its first year. The platform introduced a new paradigm for social media interaction centered on images rather than text, influencing the broader direction of the social media industry.

The Bay Area connections that both Krieger and Systrom had cultivated, particularly through their time at Stanford and in Silicon Valley's startup ecosystem, played a meaningful role in Instagram's early development and funding.

Facebook Acquisition and Growth

In April 2012, Facebook announced its acquisition of Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock, a deal that attracted significant attention given that Instagram had only 13 employees at the time. The acquisition was one of the largest in the history of social media startups and signaled the growing importance of mobile and visual social networking.

Following the acquisition, Krieger continued to serve as Instagram's CTO, overseeing the platform's technical evolution as it expanded its feature set and user base under Facebook's ownership. During his tenure, Instagram introduced video sharing, Instagram Stories (a feature for ephemeral content), direct messaging, and a range of other capabilities that transformed it from a simple photo-sharing app into a comprehensive social media platform. The service expanded from iOS to Android and to web-based access, broadening its reach considerably.

By the time Krieger departed in 2018, Instagram had grown to approximately one billion monthly active users, making it one of the most used social media platforms in the world.

Krieger's prominence as a technology leader was recognized early during the Facebook era. In January 2012, he was invited to attend the State of the Union address, sitting with Michelle Obama and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs's widow Laurene Powell Jobs.

Departure from Instagram

In late 2018, both Krieger and Systrom resigned from their positions at Instagram. Their departure came amid reported tensions with Facebook's parent company leadership over the strategic direction of the platform. The co-founders' exit was widely covered in the technology press and marked the end of an era for the platform they had built.

In March 2019, Krieger and Systrom made their first joint public appearance after leaving Instagram at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, in a keynote conversation moderated by journalist Josh Constine.

Rt.live

After departing Instagram, Krieger and Systrom turned their attention to new projects. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pair launched Rt.live, a website that tracked the effective reproduction number (Rt) of COVID-19 across U.S. states in real time. The tool provided a data-driven resource for understanding the spread of the virus and was used by journalists, policymakers, and the public during the pandemic.

Artifact

In early 2023, Krieger and Systrom launched Artifact, an AI-powered news aggregation and recommendation application. The app used artificial intelligence and machine learning to curate personalized news feeds for its users, drawing comparisons to a "TikTok for news." Artifact was initially available in a limited release before being opened to all users in February 2023.

The name "Artifact" was described as a portmanteau combining "articles," "facts," and "artificial intelligence." In a Medium post, Systrom announced the app's public launch, emphasizing its use of AI to surface high-quality journalism and combat misinformation.

Despite initial interest and positive reviews from technology commentators, Artifact was shut down in January 2024. Systrom cited the conclusion that the market opportunity for a standalone text-based news app was not large enough to warrant continued investment.

Anthropic

In 2024, Krieger joined Anthropic, an AI safety and research company founded by Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, initially serving as the company's chief product officer (CPO). At Anthropic, Krieger was responsible for overseeing the development and user experience of the company's AI products, including its conversational AI assistant Claude.

In 2025, Anthropic restructured its leadership, and Krieger transitioned from the CPO role to lead Anthropic Labs, a newly established internal incubator within the company. Anthropic Labs was described as an initiative focused on building and launching new products and experimental applications leveraging the company's AI technology.

In a 2025 interview, Krieger discussed the rapid advancement of AI capabilities at Anthropic, noting that Claude was increasingly being used in the development of its own successor models. This claim drew attention in the technology press, with commentators observing that it aligned with predictions made by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about AI systems contributing to their own improvement.

Krieger also appeared on The New York Times podcast Hard Fork in May 2025, discussing his work at Anthropic and the broader implications of AI development for the technology industry and the labor market.

He has continued to be an active figure in the AI community, appearing at industry events such as the Cerebral Valley AI Summit in San Francisco in late 2025.

Personal Life

Krieger married Kaitlyn Trigger in a ceremony that was covered by W magazine.

Philanthropy

Krieger and his wife Kaitlyn have been involved in philanthropic activities. In 2015, the couple entered into a co-funding partnership with GiveWell, the nonprofit charity evaluator that conducts in-depth research to identify high-impact giving opportunities. The partnership was announced by GiveWell on its official blog.

The couple has also been active in supporting the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Krieger and Trigger made a $1 million gift to the new Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, a donation that was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle and The Art Newspaper in 2021.

Recognition

Krieger's contributions to the technology industry have been recognized through multiple honors and media citations over the course of his career.

In 2011, Krieger and Systrom were named to Inc. magazine's "30 Under 30" list in recognition of Instagram's rapid growth and cultural impact.

In January 2012, Krieger attended the State of the Union address as a guest of First Lady Michelle Obama, seated alongside Laurene Powell Jobs. The invitation underscored the recognition of Instagram's significance as an American technology innovation.

Krieger has been profiled by the Financial Times and other major publications throughout his career.

In August 2025, Time magazine named Krieger to its inaugural "TIME100 AI" list of the 100 Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence, recognizing his work at Anthropic and his broader influence on the technology industry. The accompanying profile noted his track record of entrepreneurial accomplishment, from Instagram to his current role in AI development.

Legacy

Mike Krieger's career spans two of the most transformative periods in recent technology history: the rise of mobile social media in the 2010s and the emergence of artificial intelligence as a mainstream technology in the 2020s. As co-founder and CTO of Instagram, Krieger helped build a product that fundamentally altered how billions of people communicate, share experiences, and consume visual content. Instagram's influence extended beyond social networking to reshape industries including photography, marketing, journalism, and retail.

The technical decisions Krieger made during Instagram's early years—designing the platform to function smoothly on the mobile devices and cellular networks of 2010—established patterns that influenced subsequent mobile application development across the industry. The platform's ability to scale from a two-person engineering team to a service handling hundreds of millions of daily active users is frequently cited in technology and engineering discussions as a case study in infrastructure scaling.

Krieger's transition from social media to artificial intelligence, first through the AI-driven Artifact news app and then through his leadership at Anthropic, reflects a broader shift in Silicon Valley toward AI-centric product development. His role at Anthropic, particularly in leading the company's Labs incubator, positions him at the intersection of AI research and consumer product development during a period of rapid advancement in the field.

His philanthropic activities, including support for effective altruism through GiveWell and patronage of the arts in San Francisco, represent an additional dimension of his public life beyond technology entrepreneurship.