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AI graveyard: Relay, Character.ai, Sora and other products that shut down

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AI graveyard: Relay, Character.ai, Sora and other products that shut down

TechCrunch has published a running list of AI products, startups and bets that have shut down, pivoted or badly missed expectations. It frames the list less as a scorecard of flops than as a record of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry.

It opens with two recent cases. Relay, an AI workflow automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down entirely in August. It let users automate email and task workflows with AI agents, but as OpenAI, Google and other larger platforms built similar automation into their own tools, five-year-old Relay struggled to hold on to a reason to exist as a stand-alone product. More recently, chatbot platform Character.ai filed for bankruptcy just five years after launching. The article also cites S&P Global Market Intelligence: about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents. The reasons vary: insufficient funding, technical challenges, competition, difficulty scaling, or weak user demand.

OpenAI. On July 9 the company updated ChatGPT into a broader "super app" that combined separate Chat, Codex and Work modes and renamed the familiar version "ChatGPT Classic". Users found the new interface confusing and cluttered, and OpenAI rolled the change back soon after. Folding stand-alone apps into ChatGPT has gone better. ChatGPT Atlas, a stand-alone AI web browser, lasted less than a year before being discontinued on August 9, with its most useful features absorbed into ChatGPT. Operator, an agent that could browse the web and complete tasks, got the same treatment, and image generation is increasingly built into ChatGPT, shrinking DALL-E's role as a separate destination. The video-sharing platform Sora struggled with high operating costs and user-retention challenges and shut down in March 2026.

Apple's Siri AI. Apple Intelligence, unveiled in 2024, promised a Siri that understands context, knows what is happening across apps and gets tasks done. Apple repeatedly pushed back the release, citing engineering issues and bugs. The delay eventually contributed to a $250 million settlement over claims about how Apple marketed the AI capabilities of the iPhone 16. Siri AI appeared in the iOS 27 beta in July and is rolling out to English-language users first this month, with other languages expected to follow.

Microsoft's Recall. Announced at Build in 2024 as a "photographic memory" for Windows PCs that periodically takes screenshots, Recall drew immediate backlash over privacy and security, since critics said it could create a searchable archive of passwords, private messages and financial details. Microsoft delayed it for nearly a year to rethink protections. Even after a redesign, a cybersecurity researcher recently built a tool that could extract and display data Recall had captured, reviving questions about whether the underlying problem was fixed.

Notion Mail. Launched in April 2025 as an AI-focused email product, it is scheduled to shut down on September 22, because the company noticed users were using separate AI agents to handle their inboxes instead.

Humane AI Pin. Humane raised $230 million and drew significant attention, but the wearable struggled with performance, and the company warned customers to stop using its charging case because of a potential battery fire risk. It shut down the AI Pin business in February 2025, with most of its assets acquired by HP for $116 million.

Rabbit R1. Unveiled at CES in January 2024, the device was designed to perform tasks for its owner; Rabbit said it sold 100,000 units shortly after launch. Early reviews called it unfinished, with unreliable performance and few useful integrations. Rabbit has kept updating the R1, positioning it as a computer controller for agentic tasks, and recently announced a new hardware project, "Project Cyberdeck", a portable device built for vibe-coding.

Huxe. An AI audio app built by former developers of Google's NotebookLM, it turned written information into conversational, podcast-style audio. It shut down in May 2026, partly because larger platforms began offering similar experiences to large existing audiences; the article points to Spotify expanding its own AI audio tools.

Yupp. A free playground for comparing responses from hundreds of AI models side by side, where users could also vote on responses and earn cryptocurrency. At its peak users could test more than 800 models, including from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. According to its founders, it never achieved strong enough product-market fit to survive, and it shut down in March 2026.

Figgs AI. It operated from 2023 to 2024, letting users create and talk to customizable AI characters for role-play and storytelling. It reportedly drew more than 1 million users, but its developers said keeping the service free became too expensive to sustain, and they shut it down.

Character.ai. Founded in 2021 by former Google researchers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, it let people chat with customizable bots, many modeled on celebrities and fictional characters. It raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in 2023. The next year Google paid a reported $2.7 billion to license its technology and bring its founders back, leaving the startup to carry on without them. Then trouble piled up: families sued, alleging the chatbots contributed to teen suicides and self-harm, and Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter over unauthorized use of its characters. Character.ai barred under-18 users from open-ended chats late last year and agreed, along with Google, to settle several of the suits in early 2026. It was not enough. The company filed for bankruptcy in early October, citing legal, regulatory and operational headwinds. Disney is now the opening bidder, offering $20 million for a license to some of its intellectual property. The app keeps running during the process, and the sale is expected to wrap up by late November or early December.

Key facts

  • Relay, a Zapier alternative, shut down in August as OpenAI, Google and others built similar automation into their own tools; Character.ai filed for bankruptcy in early October, five years after launching.
  • The article cites S&P Global Market Intelligence: about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents.
  • OpenAI rolled back its July 9 ChatGPT "super app" redesign after users found it confusing, discontinued ChatGPT Atlas on August 9, and shut down Sora in March 2026.
  • Hardware and consumer cases: Humane raised $230 million before HP bought most of its assets for $116 million; Rabbit said it sold 100,000 R1 units and is still going; Apple settled for $250 million over iPhone 16 AI marketing claims.
  • Disney, which once sent Character.ai a cease-and-desist letter, is the opening bidder at $20 million for a license to some of its IP; the sale is expected to wrap up by late November or early December.

Why it matters

The list shows that failure in AI is not limited to small startups. OpenAI, Apple and Microsoft appear alongside Humane, Yupp and Figgs AI. A recurring pattern is that larger platforms absorb a stand-alone product's function: Relay lost ground to OpenAI and Google, Huxe to platforms with large existing audiences, and OpenAI itself folded Atlas and Operator into ChatGPT. The article cites S&P Global Market Intelligence for the figure that about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents.

Who it affects

Founders and investors in AI startups, since the failures range from Humane (which raised $230 million) to Character.ai (a $1 billion valuation in 2023). Corporate teams running AI initiatives are affected too, given the 42% abandonment figure. So are users of the products involved: Character.ai's app is still running during bankruptcy, Notion Mail is scheduled to shut down on September 22, and Siri AI is rolling out to English-language users first this month.

How to use it

Treat it as a reference record rather than a how-to. The article describes it as a record of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry. The cases it lays out include competition from bigger platforms (Relay, Huxe), costs (Sora's operating costs, Figgs AI's free service), weak product-market fit (Yupp), and legal pressure (Character.ai). The article does not give prices or access terms for any of the products.

How solid is it

This is a TechCrunch roundup of reported events, not original research. Most claims are stated by the article itself. Some are attributed: Yupp's founders on product-market fit, Figgs AI's developers on cost, and Rabbit on its 100,000 units sold. Two figures are hedged in the text: Google's $2.7 billion payment is "reported", and Figgs AI's 1 million users is "reportedly". The source does not say what the S&P Global figure covers in terms of sample size, time period or methodology.

Risks and caveats

The 42% figure is given as "about 42%" with no methodology, so it should not be read as a precise rate. The article gives no year for the August and September dates (Relay, Atlas, Notion Mail) or for the July 9 ChatGPT update. The Character.ai story is still moving: the sale is expected to wrap up by late November or early December, and the source does not say whether Disney's $20 million bid is final or whether competing bids exist. The Recall item rests on an unnamed researcher's tool, which revived questions about whether Microsoft fixed the underlying problem rather than settling them. Rabbit, the article notes, has not given up.

“Think of it less as a scorecard of flops than as a record of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry.”

— TechCrunch