TechCrunch's 'AI Graveyard': Notable Shutdowns and Pivots
Original: The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it
Why This Matters
A 42% abandonment rate for corporate AI projects signals that hype-driven investment is colliding with market reality.
TechCrunch is tracking a growing list of failed AI products and startups. Relay, an AI workflow tool, shut down Monday after losing ground to OpenAI and Google. S&P Global Market Intelligence data shows 42% of corporate AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned.
TechCrunch has published a running 'AI graveyard' list covering notable shutdowns, pivots, and missed bets across the industry. The latest entry is Relay, a five-year-old Zapier alternative built on AI agents for email and task automation. It closed Monday after larger platforms — OpenAI, Google, and others — absorbed similar capabilities directly into their own products, eliminating Relay's reason to exist as a standalone tool.
The list reaches well beyond small startups. OpenAI's attempt to relaunch ChatGPT as a 'super app' on July 9 — combining Chat, Codex, and Work modes while renaming the original interface 'ChatGPT Classic' — drew immediate user backlash for being confusing and cluttered. The company rolled back the redesign shortly after. Other OpenAI products to shut down include ChatGPT Atlas, a standalone AI browser discontinued August 9 (less than a year after launch), the Operator web-browsing agent, and Sora, its video-sharing platform, which closed in March 2026 citing high operating costs and poor user retention. DALL-E has also been steadily sidelined as image generation moves into ChatGPT itself.
Apple's Siri AI overhaul, announced as part of Apple Intelligence in 2024, is also on the list. S&P Global Market Intelligence puts the broader attrition rate for corporate AI initiatives at 42%.