Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down entirely in August. The product allowed users to automate email and task workflows using AI agents, but as OpenAI, Google, and other larger platforms integrated similar automation directly into their own tools, five-year-old Relay struggled to maintain its relevance as a stand-alone product.

Recent Shutdowns

More recently, the chatbot platform Character.ai filed for bankruptcy just five years after its launch. Aside from Character.ai and Relay, many AI initiatives fail to survive within the companies that create them. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents. The reasons for these failures vary:

  • Insufficient funding
  • Technical challenges
  • Competition
  • Difficulty scaling
  • Weak user demand

The result is a growing AI graveyard. Below is a look at some notable AI products, startups, launches, and bets that have shut down, pivoted, or significantly missed expectations.

Major Players Also Face Challenges

Even the biggest players aren’t immune. OpenAI, one of the most valuable private companies in the world, has experienced its own share of casualties and missteps. One recent example was its attempt to turn ChatGPT into a broader "super app." On July 9, OpenAI updated the app to combine several experiences, including separate "Chat," "Codex," and "Work" modes, while renaming the traditional version "ChatGPT Classic." The redesign quickly drew criticism from users who found the new interface confusing and cluttered, prompting OpenAI to roll back the change soon after.

OpenAI has also shut down several stand-alone apps and integrated their features directly into ChatGPT, a strategy that has proven more successful than the redesign. For instance, ChatGPT Atlas, a stand-alone AI-powered web browser, lasted less than a year before being discontinued on August 9, with its most useful features absorbed into ChatGPT. The company similarly discontinued Operator, an AI agent that could browse the web and complete tasks on behalf of users, and has increasingly built image generation directly into ChatGPT, reducing the role of DALL-E as a separate destination for creating images.