May 15 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence startup

Anthropic has appointed Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger as its

chief product officer, the company said on Wednesday, it looks

to spruce up its AI offerings and get ahead of rivals.

Krieger will oversee the company's product engineering,

management and design efforts and help bring Anthropic's AI

chatbot Claude to a wider audience, the company said.

The OpenAI competitor has attracted billions of dollars in

investment from its backers, Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Alphabet

, as Big Tech firms look to catch up with

Microsoft-backed ChatGPT maker.

Anthropic unveiled a suite of AI models known as Claude 3 in

March and said it outperforms rival models like GPT-4 from

OpenAI and Gemini 1.0 Ultra from Google on various benchmark

exams.

"Mike's background in developing intuitive products and user

experiences will be invaluable as we create new ways for people

to interact with Claude, particularly in the workplace,"

Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the company introduced a

business version of Claude 3, priced at priced at $30 per

user per month, as it looks to grab corporate dollars.

Krieger, on the other hand, sold his AI-driven news

platform, Artifact, to Yahoo last month as the company did not

see enough market opportunity to warrant continued investment.

Krieger resigned as chief technical officer of Meta-owned

Instagram in 2018 giving scant explanation for the

move.