Anthropic Restructures Executive Team to Expand Internal Incubator Business

Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, who joined Anthropic as Chief Product Officer two years ago, is shifting his focus to a new priority within the AI startup: co-leading its internal incubator, known as the "Labs" team.

The Anthropic Labs team was established in mid-2024 with only two initial members. Now, the company has decided to expand this team, concentrating on developing "experimental products." Krieger's new title will be a technical staff member reporting to Anthropic President Daniela Amodei. He will co-lead the Labs team with Ben Mann, the company's former head of product engineering. Anthropic stated that the current "Head of Product," Ami Vora, will assume Krieger's former responsibilities and work closely with Chief Technology Officer Rahul Patil to scale the company's products.

The company aims to double the size of the Labs team within the next six months.

In an interview, Krieger remarked, "We have reached a watershed moment for AI—the pace of model capability advancement is extremely rapid, and the window to shape how it is used is now. That is why I am re-entering builder mode, transitioning from the Chief Product Officer role to joining our Labs team: I want to be hands-on, building products that can steer AI to solve the world's most challenging problems. I am thrilled to pass the baton to Ami, who has led the team driving the scaling of Claude."

This executive reshuffle at Anthropic comes at a time of unprecedented intensity in the competition between AI startups and tech giants. Companies like Apple and Google are strengthening their defenses against high-flying startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic, while various firms attempt to differentiate themselves by reframing their long-term goals around "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI). They are also striving to stand out in the AI agent arena by continuously launching new features, vying for dominance in the consumer market. As funding rounds for AI companies surge dramatically—for instance, Anthropic reportedly plans to raise $100 billion at a $350 billion valuation—investors are eagerly awaiting the fulfillment of these promises.