If you needed a signal that Anthropic is shifting gears from "research lab" to "product powerhouse," this is it. The company is actively expanding **Anthropic Labs**, its experimental product arm, and has reshuffled its C-suite to put its best builders back in the code.
The Headline: Mike Krieger Goes 'Back to the Lab'
**Mike Krieger**, the co-founder of Instagram who has served as Anthropic’s Chief Product Officer for the past two years, is stepping down from the C-suite to step *up* into the Labs. In Silicon Valley, it is rare for a C-level executive to move "down" into a hands-on building role. But at Anthropic, this seems to be the new prestige track.
Krieger is joining Labs to build directly alongside **Ben Mann**, signaling a company-wide emphasis on shipping frontier experiments over purely managing scale.
Who is Leading What?
The reorganization clarifies Anthropic's dual focus:
🚀 The "Zero to One" Team (Labs)
Led by: Mike Krieger & Ben Mann
Hiring for "builders"—engineers and designers who thrive on ambiguity and want to define new interaction models. They aren't optimizing metrics; they are inventing categories.
📈 The "One to Billion" Team (Product)
Led by: Ami Vora (ex-Meta)
Taking over the "ship" to let Mike build. Partnering with CTO Rahul Patil, her mandate is stability, scale, and enterprise reliability.
Why They Are Hiring Now
Anthropic Labs is effectively a "startup within a startup." They are expanding because the gap between what the model can do and what the interface allows is getting too wide.
The current hiring wave for Labs is likely targeting a specific profile:
- Full-Stack Product Engineers: People who can touch the model, the backend, and the UI.
- Designers who Code: Since the interaction models (like agentic workspaces) haven't been invented yet, they need designers who can prototype in code.
- Rapid Prototypers: The goal of Labs is to ship "Research Previews," so velocity is the primary metric.
"The message is clear: They don't just want managers to oversee Claude; they want founders to come in and help Claude build the future."
What This Means for You
If you are an engineer or product thinker looking at the AI space, Anthropic just hung a massive "Help Wanted" sign on its most interesting door. If you've been waiting for a role that blends deep research access with consumer product velocity, Anthropic Labs might be the most exciting team in AI right now.