AI & Models
AI's growing graveyard: Relay shuts down as consumer AI bets keep failing
Workflow-automation startup Relay shut down this week, one entry in a growing "AI graveyard" of shelved products — about 42% of corporate AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned, per S&P Global.
Relay, an AI-powered workflow-automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down entirely this week, unable to hold onto a reason to exist as a standalone product once OpenAI, Google, and other larger platforms built similar automation directly into their own tools. The five-year-old startup is one entry in a growing “AI graveyard” of products, launches, and bets that have shut down, pivoted, or significantly missed expectations — a pattern that extends well beyond one startup. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents, for reasons ranging from insufficient funding and technical challenges to competition and weak user demand.
Even the largest AI players have had stumbles. OpenAI rolled back a July redesign that combined ChatGPT into separate “Chat,” “Codex,” and “Work” modes after users called it confusing, and has folded several standalone products — the Atlas web browser and the Operator web-browsing agent among them — back into ChatGPT itself; its video-sharing app Sora shut down in March 2026 over high operating costs and weak user retention. Apple’s AI-powered Siri, delayed for years, only began rolling out this year after contributing to a $250 million settlement over how the company marketed the iPhone 16’s AI capabilities. Notion Mail, an AI-focused inbox app, is set to shut down September 22 after the company found users preferred separate AI agents for email instead.
Hardware bets have fared no better: Humane, which raised $230 million for its AI Pin wearable, shut the product down in February 2025 after performance problems and a battery-fire warning, selling most of its assets to HP for $116 million. Rabbit’s R1 companion device sold 100,000 units shortly after its 2024 launch but drew criticism as unfinished; the company is now pivoting the device toward agentic tasks and a new “Project Cyberdeck” hardware project.
Why it matters
With nearly half of corporate AI bets ultimately abandoned, the graveyard is less a story of a few high-profile flops than evidence that even well-funded companies are still guessing at what AI products people will actually keep using.