Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool designed as an alternative to Zapier, was shut down entirely in August. The product allows users to automate email and task workflows using AI agents, but as OpenAI, Google, and other larger platforms have built similar automation directly into their own tools, five-year-old Relay has struggled to maintain a reason to exist as a standalone product.
More recently, chatbot platform Character.ai filed for bankruptcy just five years after its launch.
Aside from Character.ai and Relay, many AI bets don’t even survive within the companies that build them. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, approximately 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their parent companies. The reasons vary: insufficient funding, technical challenges, competition, difficulty scaling, or simply low user demand.
The result is a growing AI graveyard. Below is a look at some of the most notable AI products, startups, launches, and bets that have been discontinued, pivoted, or significantly missed expectations. Think of it less as a scorecard of failures and more as an account of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry.
OpenAI has had several stumbles
Even the biggest actors are not immune. OpenAI, one of the most valuable private companies in the world, has had its share of casualties and missteps. One of the most recent examples is its attempt to turn ChatGPT into a broader “super app.” On July 9, OpenAI updated the app to combine multiple experiences, including separate “Chat,” “Codex,” and “Work” modes, while renaming the familiar, traditional version “ChatGPT Classic.”
The redesign quickly drew criticism from users who found the new interface confusing and cluttered, and OpenAI reversed the change shortly after, bringing back ChatGPT’s familiar interface.
This wasn’t OpenAI’s only attempt to bring everything under one roof. The company also shut down several standalone apps and integrated their functionality directly into ChatGPT – a strategy that worked better than the redesign. ChatGPT Atlas, a standalone 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 did the same thing with Operator, an AI agent capable of browsing the web and performing tasks on a user’s behalf, and OpenAI has increasingly integrated image generation directly into ChatGPT, reducing DALL-E’s role as a separate destination for image creation.
We also can’t forget its video sharing platform, Sora, which faced high operating costs and user retention issues and shut down in March 2026.
Apple’s Siri AI
When Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence in 2024, an improved Siri was one of the highlighted features. The pitch promised a Siri that could understand context, know what was happening in apps, and accomplish tasks efficiently.
However, Apple has repeatedly pushed back the release of the new Siri, citing various reasons such as engineering issues and bugs. That delay ultimately contributed to a $250 million settlement over claims over how Apple marketed the iPhone 16’s AI capabilities.
Siri AI finally appeared in the iOS 27 beta last July, with the new AI-powered version rolling out to English-speaking users for the first time this month; support for other languages is expected to follow.
Microsoft recall
Announced at its Build 2024 developer conference, Microsoft’s Recall feature was billed as an AI-powered “photographic memory” for Windows PCs, periodically taking screenshots of what a user was doing so they could then search their own digital history.
As expected, the announcement sparked an immediate privacy and security backlash. Critics have argued that Recall could create a searchable archive of highly sensitive information, including passwords, private messages, financial details and other activities. Microsoft delayed the feature for nearly a year, giving the company time to rethink its security and privacy protections.
Even after a redesign, the controversy has not gone away. A cybersecurity researcher recently built a tool that can extract and display data captured by Recall, reigniting the question of whether Microsoft has actually fixed the underlying problem.
Mail concept
Notion Mail launched in April 2025 as an AI-driven email product designed to help users organize and automate their inboxes. However, the company noticed that its users were instead using separate AI agents to manage their email inboxes. As a result, Notion Mail is expected to close on September 22.
Human AI Pin
The Humane AI Pin is probably one of the most well-known failures in AI hardware. Designed to deliver AI capabilities through a wearable device rather than a traditional smartphone, Humane has raised $230 million from investors and garnered considerable attention.
But the product suffered immensely in terms of performance, and the situation worsened when Humane warned customers to stop using its charging case due to a potential battery fire hazard. Humane subsequently closed its AI Pin business in February 2025, with most of the company’s assets acquired by HP for $116 million.
Rabbit R1
The Rabbit R1 was another high-profile AI device. Unveiled at CES in January 2024, the AI companion was designed to perform tasks on behalf of its owner. Rabbit said it sold 100,000 units shortly after its launch.
However, strong initial sales did not mean it was a solid product. Early reviews described the device as unfinished, with unreliable performance and a limited number of useful integrations.
However, the company has not given up. She continued to update the R1, positioning it as a computer controller capable of performing agentic tasks. It also recently announced a new hardware project, dubbed “Project Cyberdeck,” aimed at creating a wearable device designed for vibrational coding.
Hux
Huxe was an AI audio application, created by former developers of Google’s NotebookLM, that transformed written information into podcast-style conversational audio.
The company closed in May 2026, in part because larger platforms began offering similar experiences to large existing audiences. For example, Spotify has developed its own AI-based audio tools.
Yeah
Yupp was an interesting AI product: a free playground that allowed users to compare responses from hundreds of AI models side by side. Users can also vote on answers and earn cryptocurrency through the platform.
At its peak, the platform allowed users to test more than 800 models, including those from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. But according to its founders, Yupp never achieved a strong enough product-market fit to survive. The platform closed its doors in March 2026.
Figgs AI
Figgs AI ran from 2023 to 2024, allowing users to create and interact with customizable AI characters for role-playing games and storytelling. The platform reportedly attracted more than a million users, but its developers said that keeping the service free was becoming too expensive to maintain and they shut it down.
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