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The AI graveyard: TechCrunch tracks AI's failed bets, from Relay to the Humane AI Pin

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The AI graveyard: TechCrunch tracks AI's failed bets, from Relay to the Humane AI Pin

TechCrunch keeps a running list of AI products, startups and corporate bets that have shut down, pivoted or significantly missed expectations, framed not as a scorecard of flops but as a record of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry. The latest entry is Relay, a five-year-old AI-powered workflow-automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier that let users automate email and task workflows with AI agents. Relay shut down entirely on Monday after OpenAI, Google and other larger platforms built similar automation directly into their own tools, leaving the standalone product with no clear reason to exist. TechCrunch cites S&P Global Market Intelligence data showing that about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents, for reasons that vary: insufficient funding, technical challenges, competition, difficulty scaling, or simply weak user demand.

Even OpenAI, one of the most valuable private companies in the world, has had its own share of casualties and missteps. On July 9 it updated ChatGPT into a broader 'super app' that combined separate 'Chat,' 'Codex,' and 'Work' modes and renamed the familiar version 'ChatGPT Classic.' The redesign drew criticism from users who found the new interface confusing and cluttered, and OpenAI rolled it back soon after, restoring the familiar ChatGPT interface. OpenAI has had more success folding standalone apps back into ChatGPT than it did with that 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 with Operator, an AI agent that could browse the web and complete tasks on a user's behalf, and has increasingly built image generation directly into ChatGPT, shrinking the role of DALL-E as its own separate destination for creating images. Its video-sharing platform, Sora, struggled with high operating costs and user-retention challenges and shut down in March 2026.

Apple's Siri overhaul also stumbled. When Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence in 2024, an improved Siri, one that could understand context, know what was happening across a user's apps, and get tasks done effectively, was one of the highlighted features. Apple repeatedly pushed back the release of the new Siri, citing reasons that included engineering issues and bugs, and the delay eventually contributed to a $250 million settlement over claims about how Apple marketed the iPhone 16's AI capabilities. Siri AI finally appeared in the iOS 27 beta this past July, with the new AI-powered version rolling out to English-language users first this month; support for other languages is expected to follow.

Microsoft's Recall, announced at its 2024 Build developer conference, was pitched as an AI-powered 'photographic memory' for Windows PCs, periodically taking screenshots of what a user was doing so they could later search back through their own digital history. The announcement triggered an immediate backlash: critics argued Recall could create a searchable archive of highly sensitive information, including passwords, private messages and financial details. Microsoft delayed the feature for nearly a year to rethink its security and privacy protections, but the controversy hasn't gone away. A cybersecurity researcher has since built a tool that can extract and display data Recall had captured, reviving questions about whether Microsoft has actually fixed the underlying problem.

Notion Mail, an AI-focused email product meant to help users organize and automate their inboxes, launched in April 2025. Notion noticed its users were instead using separate AI agents to handle their email inboxes, and Notion Mail is scheduled to shut down on September 22.

The Humane AI Pin is probably one of the most well-known failures in AI hardware. Designed to provide AI features through a wearable device rather than a traditional smartphone, Humane raised $230 million from investors and drew significant attention. But the product struggled with performance, and matters worsened when Humane warned customers to stop using its charging case over a potential battery fire risk. Humane shut down its AI Pin business in February 2025, with most of the company's assets acquired by HP for $116 million.

The Rabbit R1, another heavily hyped AI device unveiled at CES in January 2024, was designed to perform tasks on behalf of its owner; Rabbit said it had sold 100,000 units shortly after launch. Strong initial sales didn't mean it was a strong product, though: early reviews described the device as unfinished, with unreliable performance and a limited number of useful integrations. Rabbit hasn't given up. It has continued updating the R1, positioning it as a computer controller capable of performing agentic tasks, and recently announced a new hardware project, dubbed 'Project Cyberdeck,' aimed at a portable device built for vibe-coding.

Three smaller products round out the list. Huxe, an AI audio app built by former developers of Google's NotebookLM that turned written information into conversational, podcast-style audio, shut down in May 2026 as larger platforms, including Spotify, began offering similar experiences to large existing audiences. Yupp, a free playground where, at its peak, users could test more than 800 AI models side by side, including from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, and could vote on responses to earn cryptocurrency, shut down in March 2026; according to its founders, Yupp never achieved strong enough product-market fit to survive. Figgs AI, which let users create and interact with customizable AI characters for role-play and storytelling and reportedly drew more than 1 million users, operated from 2023 to 2024 before its developers said keeping the service free had become too expensive to sustain.

Key facts

  • Relay, a five-year-old AI workflow-automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down entirely on Monday after OpenAI, Google and other larger platforms built similar automation directly into their own products.
  • About 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
  • OpenAI rolled back its July 9 ChatGPT 'super app' redesign after user backlash, discontinued the standalone ChatGPT Atlas browser on August 9 after less than a year, and shut down Sora in March 2026.
  • The Humane AI Pin, which raised $230 million from investors, shut down in February 2025 after a battery fire warning; HP acquired most of Humane's assets for $116 million.
  • Notion Mail is scheduled to shut down on September 22, and Yupp, a free playground that let users test more than 800 AI models at its peak, shut down in March 2026 after its founders said it never found product-market fit.

Why it matters

This reads less like a single story than a pattern: TechCrunch's running list shows how many AI bets, from five-person startups to divisions inside the world's biggest tech companies, don't survive contact with the market. S&P Global Market Intelligence data cited in the piece puts the corporate abandonment rate at about 42%, for reasons that range from thin funding and technical trouble to competition and weak demand. A recurring theme across the entries is platform gravity: standalone products like Relay, Huxe and Notion Mail lost their reason to exist once OpenAI, Google, Spotify and other large platforms built comparable features directly into tools people already use, while even OpenAI's own standalone spinoffs, ChatGPT Atlas and Operator, ended up folded back into ChatGPT rather than surviving on their own.

Who it affects

AI startups building a single-purpose tool (workflow automation, email agents, audio generation) are the most exposed group; the through-line is that a bigger platform can absorb that feature faster than a standalone company can defend a reason to exist. Corporate product teams inside large companies face a different risk: user backlash can kill a launch fast, as it did for OpenAI's ChatGPT 'super app' redesign and for the privacy criticism aimed at Microsoft's Recall. Everyday users of the specific discontinued products are affected directly: Notion Mail users have until September 22 before their inbox tool disappears, and Humane AI Pin, Yupp and Figgs AI users have already lost tools they paid for or relied on. Rabbit R1 owners are in a different spot: the device hasn't been discontinued, but it's being repositioned as a computer controller rather than supported as the AI companion it was originally sold as. Humane's investors, who put in $230 million, saw most of the company's assets sold to HP for $116 million.

How to use it

Status varies a lot by entry, so it helps to separate what's actually gone from what only changed shape. Fully shut down, with nothing to migrate to: Relay, Sora, the Humane AI Pin, Huxe, Yupp and Figgs AI. Shutting down on a set date: Notion Mail, on September 22. Discontinued as standalone products but not lost: ChatGPT Atlas and Operator were folded back into ChatGPT, which now carries their most useful features, while DALL-E's role keeps shrinking as OpenAI builds image generation directly into ChatGPT. Recovered rather than killed: Siri AI shipped in the iOS 27 beta this past July, with the AI-powered version reaching English-language users first this month and other languages to follow, and Microsoft's Recall is still shipping after a security and privacy redesign, though a researcher's new data-extraction tool means the underlying concern hasn't fully gone away. Still alive and pivoting: Rabbit R1, now positioned as a computer controller for agentic tasks, with a new device, 'Project Cyberdeck,' announced for vibe-coding.

How solid is it

This is TechCrunch's own running, continuously updated feature rather than a one-off investigation, compiling in one place events that were mostly already reported elsewhere. Attribution is consistently to companies, unnamed groups such as 'critics' or 'early reviews,' or to the article itself; no individual executive, founder or spokesperson is named anywhere in it. The headline statistic, the 42% corporate AI-abandonment rate, is credited to S&P Global Market Intelligence, but the article gives no methodology, sample size or time period behind that number. A few of the specific figures are flagged as self-reported rather than independently confirmed: the Rabbit R1's 100,000-unit sales figure is presented as 'Rabbit said,' and Figgs AI's user count is qualified 'reportedly.'

Risks and caveats

Because this is a running list, it's a snapshot as of publication and TechCrunch is likely to keep adding entries, so read the roster of failures as partial rather than exhaustive. Several dates are incomplete in the source itself: Relay's shutdown is dated only to 'Monday,' with no month or year given, and the July 9 ChatGPT redesign, the August 9 Atlas discontinuation and Siri's 'this past July' beta appearance are all missing a stated year. The article also doesn't name which specific OpenAI, Google or other product actually replaced Relay's automation features, so that competitive claim can't be checked against a named rival, and it gives no revenue or funding figures for Relay itself beyond its five-year age.