Mike Krieger is a Brazilian-American software engineer and entrepreneur best known for co-founding Instagram with Kevin Systrom.

He spent eight years building Instagram and served as its Chief Technology Officer during some of the fastest growth in the company’s history. After leaving Instagram in 2018, Krieger returned to building products with Systrom, first through a COVID-19 tracking project and later through the AI-powered news app Artifact.

His career took another turn in 2024 when he joined Anthropic, the company behind Claude. Anthropic hired him as its first Chief Product Officer. In January 2026, Krieger moved from the main product organisation into Anthropic Labs, a team working on experimental products built around new Claude capabilities.

Mike Krieger at a Glance

Detail	Information
Full Name	Michel Krieger
Known As	Mike Krieger
Date of Birth	March 4, 1986
Birthplace	São Paulo, Brazil
Nationality	Brazilian-American
Profession	Software engineer, entrepreneur and product builder
Education	Stanford University
Degree	Symbolic Systems
Known For	Co-founding Instagram
Instagram Role	Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Later Startup	Artifact
Current Work	Anthropic Labs
Wife	Kaitlyn Trigger

Mike Krieger Was Born in Brazil

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Mike Krieger was born on March 4, 1986, in São Paulo, Brazil.

He spent his early life in Brazil before moving to the United States for university. In 2004, Krieger went to California to study at Stanford University.

He chose Symbolic Systems, a Stanford programme that brings together areas such as computer science, psychology, linguistics and philosophy.

The course suited the kind of work Krieger would later become known for. His career has never been only about writing software. Much of his work has involved thinking about how ordinary people actually use technology and how a complicated product can feel simple when it reaches the screen.

Stanford later described Krieger as a Symbolic Systems graduate and a native of São Paulo.

Stanford Led Him Into the Startup World

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Krieger did not graduate from Stanford with Instagram already planned.

He worked on different technology projects and eventually built an application called Crime Scene SF. Around the same period, fellow Stanford graduate Kevin Systrom was working on another mobile project called Burbn.

The two knew each other through Stanford and eventually decided to work together.

Burbn was built around location and social check-ins. Users could share where they were, make plans and post photographs.

The photo part began getting their attention.

Stanford’s account of Instagram’s early days says people were uploading photos and videos to Burbn even while the founders were still trying to decide what the product should become. Krieger and Systrom eventually went back to the basic problem they wanted to solve: making mobile photo sharing fast and simple.

Burbn Eventually Became Instagram

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Burbn had too many things going on. Instead of continuing to add features, Krieger and Systrom removed most of them.

They kept the part people seemed to enjoy most: taking a photo, improving it with a filter and sharing it from a phone.

The new app became Instagram.

Instagram launched in 2010, at a time when smartphone photography was becoming much more common but uploading and sharing good-looking mobile photos was still awkward.

The app was deliberately simple.

A person could take a picture, choose a filter, write a caption and post it. There were no long menus or complicated publishing tools.

That simplicity became one of the reasons Instagram grew so quickly.

What Did Mike Krieger Do at Instagram?

Kevin Systrom became the better-known public face of Instagram, but Krieger handled a large part of the technical work behind it.

He served as Chief Technology Officer and worked on the engineering needed to keep Instagram running as more people joined.

In the early days, the company had very few employees. Krieger was writing code and dealing with the same technical problems that would later be divided across large engineering teams.

The scale changed dramatically. Anthropic said when it hired Krieger in 2024 that he had helped grow Instagram to more than one billion users and had expanded its engineering organisation to more than 450 people. Figma later described his work in similar terms, saying he helped scale Instagram’s infrastructure from a few million users to more than one billion monthly active users.

His job changed with the company.

At first, Krieger could work directly on individual parts of the product. As Instagram grew, much more of his work involved building teams and making sure the technology could support an app being used around the world.

Facebook Bought Instagram for About $1 Billion

Instagram had only been around for a short time when Facebook decided to buy it.

On April 9, 2012, Facebook announced an agreement to acquire Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and Facebook shares.

Krieger and Systrom stayed after the acquisition.

Instagram also continued operating as its own product rather than disappearing inside Facebook.

Over the next several years, Instagram added video, direct messaging, Stories and many other features while its audience continued growing.

By the time Krieger left, the platform had reached more than one billion monthly users.

Mike Krieger Left Instagram in 2018

Krieger and Systrom announced their departure from Instagram in September 2018.

They had spent roughly eight years building the company.

Their exit came six years after Facebook bought Instagram. The two founders did not immediately announce another startup.

Instagram later named Adam Mosseri as its new head. In a statement published after their departure, Krieger and Systrom said they were looking forward to watching Instagram continue to develop as users rather than as the people running the platform.

Krieger was 32 when he left a product that had already reached around a billion users.

Rt.live Brought Krieger and Systrom Back Together

Krieger and Systrom worked together again during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In April 2020, they launched Rt.live.

The website tracked estimates of how quickly COVID-19 was spreading across individual U.S. states. The name came from the epidemiological reproduction number, or R, which helps describe whether an outbreak is growing or shrinking.

Rt.live was not another social network.

It was a much smaller project built for a specific problem at a time when people were trying to understand rapidly changing COVID data.

It was also the first public product the two Instagram founders had worked on together since leaving Facebook.

Artifact Took Them Into AI-Powered News

In 2023, Krieger and Systrom returned with a larger project called Artifact.

Artifact was a personalised news app that used machine learning to decide which articles a reader was likely to find interesting.

The product changed over time and added more social features, but it struggled to find a large enough market.

The founders announced plans to wind it down in early 2024.

The technology still found a buyer.

Yahoo acquired Artifact in April 2024 and said its AI-powered recommendation technology would be used across Yahoo products, including Yahoo News. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Krieger and Systrom remained involved in an advisory capacity during the transition.

Mike Krieger Joined Anthropic in 2024

Only a few weeks after the Artifact deal, Krieger announced his next job.

Anthropic hired him as its Chief Product Officer in May 2024.

It was the first CPO role at the AI company.

Krieger was put in charge of product engineering, product management and product design. Anthropic was already building Claude, but the company wanted to expand the ways consumers and businesses could use its AI models.

Krieger’s move into Anthropic also brought him back to the kind of work he had done throughout his career.

Instagram had required taking new technology and turning it into something millions of ordinary people could understand. Anthropic was facing a similar product problem with artificial intelligence, although the technology itself was very different.

What Happened to Mike Krieger’s Anthropic CPO Role?

Krieger is still at Anthropic, but his job changed in January 2026.

Anthropic created an expanded internal group called Labs to work on experimental products built around new Claude capabilities.

Krieger moved into Labs to build alongside Ben Mann.

At the same time, Ami Vora took over leadership of Anthropic’s main Product organisation.

So describing Krieger simply as Anthropic’s current Chief Product Officer is now out of date.

He held the CPO role from 2024 into early 2026. His current work is centred on Anthropic Labs, where the company is trying ideas before deciding which ones should become larger products.

What Is Anthropic Labs?

Anthropic describes Labs as a team for incubating experimental products around the latest capabilities of Claude.

The idea is to let a smaller group build and test things quickly before every project has to operate like an established product used by millions of people.

Anthropic pointed to projects such as Claude Code, the Model Context Protocol and other newer Claude tools when it announced the expanded Labs group.

Krieger joined the team in January 2026 after spending nearly two years leading product at Anthropic.

It puts him closer to hands-on product building again rather than only overseeing an increasingly large product organisation.

Mike Krieger Also Joined Figma’s Board

Krieger added another role in July 2025, when Figma appointed him to its board of directors alongside Duolingo co-founder Luis von Ahn.

Figma pointed to his experience building Instagram and leading product at Anthropic when it announced the appointment.

The board role does not mean Krieger works at Figma full time.

He remains involved with Anthropic while advising Figma at board level.

Mike Krieger’s Personal Life

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Krieger married Kaitlyn Trigger in 2015.

Trigger has worked in technology and has also been involved with startups, art and philanthropy.

The two met several years before their wedding, when Krieger was still working in the technology industry before Instagram had reached its later size. W Magazine reported around the time of their engagement that Trigger and Krieger had met at a housewarming party.

The couple have generally kept their personal life much less public than Krieger’s work.

Krieger himself also maintains a lower celebrity profile than many founders connected with companies of Instagram’s size. Most public coverage of him centres on product building, startups and technology rather than his private lifestyle.

Mike Krieger and Philanthropy

Krieger and Trigger have also put money into philanthropy.

In 2015, they announced a partnership with GiveWell and the Open Philanthropy Project.

They committed $750,000 over two years, with most of the money allocated to grants recommended through the Open Philanthropy Project.

At the time, the couple wrote that they wanted to learn more about philanthropy while they were giving rather than wait until they felt they understood every issue.

They have also supported art organisations in San Francisco.

Krieger and Trigger were among the founding donors connected with the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco.

What Is Mike Krieger Doing Now?

As of 2026, Mike Krieger is working at Anthropic Labs.

He moved there after serving as Anthropic’s Chief Product Officer from May 2024 until early 2026.

The Labs team is working on new AI products and testing ideas built around Claude before they become established parts of Anthropic’s larger product lineup.

He also remains a member of Figma’s board of directors.

Instagram is still the company most closely connected with his name, but his career has moved through several different areas since leaving it: public-health software, personalised news, artificial intelligence and startup investing and advising.

Mike Krieger’s Career Has Stayed Close to Product Building

There is a fairly clear line through most of Krieger’s career.

Instagram began with a small mobile product built by two people. Artifact tried to rethink how people found news. His work at Anthropic now deals with turning increasingly capable AI models into products people can actually use.

The size of the companies has changed, but Krieger has kept returning to product work.

Instagram remains his biggest success. He helped take an app built by a tiny team in 2010 and scale it into a platform with more than one billion users.

His current work at Anthropic puts him back in an earlier stage of that process, where new technology exists but many of the products that will eventually be built around it are still being worked out.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Mike Krieger?

Mike Krieger is a Brazilian-American software engineer and entrepreneur. He co-founded Instagram with Kevin Systrom and served as the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

When was Mike Krieger born?

Mike Krieger was born on March 4, 1986, in São Paulo, Brazil.

Where did Mike Krieger study?

Krieger studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford University after moving from Brazil to California. Stanford has described him as a graduate of the programme.

Did Mike Krieger create Instagram?

Yes. Mike Krieger co-founded Instagram with Kevin Systrom. The app developed from an earlier project called Burbn.

What was Mike Krieger’s job at Instagram?

Krieger served as Chief Technology Officer. He worked heavily on Instagram’s early engineering and later helped scale its infrastructure and engineering organisation as the platform grew.

How much did Facebook pay for Instagram?

Facebook announced in 2012 that it would acquire Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash and shares.

When did Mike Krieger leave Instagram?

Krieger and Kevin Systrom announced that they were leaving Instagram in September 2018.

What was Artifact?

Artifact was a personalised news app created by Krieger and Systrom. It launched in 2023, later wound down as a standalone service, and its technology was acquired by Yahoo in 2024.

Does Mike Krieger work at Anthropic?

Yes. Anthropic hired Krieger as Chief Product Officer in 2024. In January 2026, he moved into Anthropic Labs, where he works on experimental AI products alongside Ben Mann.

Is Mike Krieger still Anthropic’s Chief Product Officer?

No. Krieger moved from the CPO role into Anthropic Labs in January 2026. Ami Vora now leads Anthropic’s Product organisation.

Who is Mike Krieger’s wife?

Mike Krieger is married to Kaitlyn Trigger. The couple married in 2015 and have also worked together on philanthropic projects.