Original data · v2026.Q3 · verified 2026-08-06
The AI tool graveyard: all 276 casualties, named
The list nobody maintains
All 276 entries verified against primary sources by 2026-08-06. Corrections: [email protected] — being wrongly listed here is worse than being dead, and we fix it fast.
Roughly one in four tools in our tracked field (276 of 1174) is no longer what the listicles say it is. Every entry below names what happened, because a reference that hides the graveyard isn't one — and because the fastest way to lose a reader's trust is to recommend a product that shut down eight months ago.
Dead (63)
| Tool | Maker | Category | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Air AI | Air AI | Voice Support | The viral 2023 '10–40 minute AI sales calls' startup; product and marketing machine vanished — the air.ai domain now belongs to defense-software firm Govini's 2026 'Air' rebrand |
| Airgram | Airgram | Meeting Capture | Once a well-reviewed notetaker; wound down and domain unreachable by Aug 2026 |
| Almanac | Almanac Labs | Knowledge Wiki | Structured-docs startup for async teams; site frozen with a 2023 'Go Forward' letter — effectively dormant |
| AngelList Stack | AngelList | Incorporation | The 2021-era incorporation/banking bundle is gone — angellist.com/stack now surfaces Rollups and fund products with no formation offering |
| Annoy | Spotify | Vector Store | The 2015-era ANN library; superseded by Spotify's own Voyager and modern HNSW implementations — historical interest only |
| Aptible Comply | Aptible | Compliance | One of the first compliance-automation products; sunset as Aptible refocused on its hosting PaaS — proof the category predates the 2021 boom |
| Atrium | Justin Kan | Legal | The cautionary tale: $75.5M raised to blend software and salaried startup lawyers; shut down Mar 3, 2020 — 'did not figure out how to make a dent in operational efficiency.' Crosby is the LLM-era retry |
| Azlo | BBVA | Banking | The cautionary tale: BBVA's free SMB neobank, shut down 2021 when the sponsor lost interest — the argument for picking platforms with their own momentum (or charter) |
| Bark | Suno | Voice | Early generative-audio OSS star; unmaintained since Suno went all-in on music |
| Blissfully | Vendr (then) | Spend Management | Early SMP acquired by Vendr in Feb 2022; brand retired — and its acquirer has now itself been acquired |
| buildspace | Farza Majeed | Community | DEAD. The largest cohort-based build-in-public school of the 2021–24 era; the site now shows only a farewell letter — 'hi. this was buildspace… ty for the memories.' The cautionary tale for cohort-shaped community businesses |
| Capshare | Shareworks/Solium (acq. 2017) | Equity | Early Carta rival, absorbed into Shareworks; brand retired |
| Carta Liquidity / CartaX | Carta | Equity | The cautionary tale within the leader: private stock exchange launched 2021, exited Jan 2024 after data-misuse allegations, business sold Aug 2024 |
| Codeball | Sturdy (YC) | Code Review | 2022 deep-learning PR reviewer; repo dormant for years — the category's first graveyard entry |
| Defer | Defer (France) | Orchestration | TypeScript background-jobs platform; shut down May 2024 — the category's first casualty, users migrated to Trigger.dev/Inngest |
| Enzai | Enzai (Belfast) | AI-Act Readiness | Early AI-governance startup; enzai.co no longer resolves (Aug 2026) — presumed wound down or absorbed; re-verify before citing |
| G2 Track | G2 | Spend Management | G2's SaaS spend tracker, shut down circa 2021 — proof that adjacency to software buyers wasn't enough |
| Grok 3 / 4.1 Fast | xAI | Frontier Model | Budget model line retired May 15, 2026 with ~2 months' notice; requests redirect to Grok 4.3 at its rates |
| Humanloop | Humanloop → Anthropic | Evals & Observability | First-mover LLM eval/prompt platform; team acqui-hired by Anthropic, platform sunset with migration guides (2025) |
| Indicative | was Indicative → mParticle | Analytics | Warehouse-connected journey analytics; acquired by mParticle (2022) and subsequently wound down as a standalone product |
| Inflection AI (Pi) | Inflection | Frontier Model | The original consumer-companion frontier bid; core team absorbed by Microsoft (2024), pivoted to enterprise — Pi effectively frozen |
| InVision | InVision | Design | The 2010s prototyping unicorn ($2B peak) shut its design services Dec 31, 2024; Freehand sold to Miro — the category's cautionary tale |
| June | was June (YC W21) → Amplitude | Analytics | The beloved B2B-SaaS analytics startup; acquired by Amplitude Aug 8, 2025, standalone product shut down, customers migrated to Amplitude |
| Lexica | Lexica | Image | Early SD search engine + Aperture model; effectively dormant since 2024 |
| LinkedIn Skill Assessments | LinkedIn (Microsoft) | Verified Skill | The old multiple-choice badge test — retired; LinkedIn's help centre now carries a 'no longer available' notice. The precedent worth remembering before over-investing in its replacement |
| Llama 4 Behemoth | Meta | Open Weights | The ~2T flagship that was previewed Apr 2025 and never shipped — training issues reported; emblem of the Meta retreat |
| LLM Guard | Protect AI → Palo Alto Networks | Guardrails | The category's most-forked OSS scanner suite — archived Jul 9, 2026, models on Hugging Face abandoned, final release v0.3.16 (May 2025). Migration path is Prisma AIRS; OSS successors are TrustGate and NeMo |
| LTSE Equity | LTSE (ex-Captable.io) | Equity | Gone — product no longer appears anywhere on ltse.com (Aug 2026); shutdown communicated to users circa 2024, exact date unverified |
| Luna.ai | Luna | AI SDR | Early self-serve AI SDR (60k+ users claimed in 2023) — domain now parked for sale on GoDaddy (checked Aug 2026) |
| MagicBrief | MagicBrief → Canva | Paid Ads | Ad-inspiration and creative-workflow tool; acquired by Canva, shut down Jul 31, 2026 — functionality folded into Canva Grow |
| Makerlog | Sergio Mattei | Launch Channels | The maker-streak launch community of the 2018–2021 era; getmakerlog.com now redirects to an unrelated site |
| Mindstrong | Mindstrong Health | Founder Health | Digital-biomarker mental health unicorn; wound down Feb–Mar 2023, tech sold to SonderMind — the D2C mental-health graveyard's headstone |
| Motiff | Kanyun (Yuanfudao) | Design | The aggressive 'AI-native Figma' challenger is gone — discontinued 2026, data export open until Oct 31, 2026 |
| Motorhead | Metal (getmetal) | Memory Layer | Early Rust memory/retrieval server for LLMs — unsupported since Dec 2023; the category's first grave |
| Neeva | Neeva | Research Engine | The original paid ad-free search bet — shut down consumer product 2023, team acquired by Snowflake; Kagi inherited the thesis |
| Noteable | Noteable | Warehouse & Notebooks | Collaborative notebook startup; shut down late 2023 after the ChatGPT-plugin wave it rode receded |
| On Deck's multi-track fellowship era | On Deck | Community | Dead as a format. The 2021-era sprawl of ODF/ODCS/ODANGEL/no-code/scale tracks collapsed after the 2022 layoffs; what survives is the single one-week SF sprint listed above. Any guide describing multi-track On Deck is stale |
| OpenAI Operator | OpenAI | Browser Agent | The Jan 2025 computer-use pioneer; deprecated into ChatGPT agent mode and shut down Aug 2025 |
| Panther | Panther | Hiring & EOR | Early remote-employment startup (YC-adjacent, 2021 hype cohort); wound down mid-2020s — reported shutdown, no primary obituary found |
| Peppertype.ai | Pepper | Content Engine | The 2021-vintage AI copywriter — absorbed into Pepper's platform and gone as a standalone product; no trace on the 2026 site |
| pg_embedding | Neon | Vector Store | Neon's rival Postgres extension, deprecated in 2023 in favor of pgvector — early evidence the ecosystem consolidates on one Postgres answer |
| Plato | Plato → Coda → Grammarly → Superhuman | Mentors & Advisors | Mentorship marketplace for engineering leaders — 1,000+ mentors, 500+ leaders, 13 Elevate conferences. Sunset Dec 19, 2025 after the Coda/Grammarly/Superhuman chain; platohq.com now redirects to a Substack |
| Quirrel | Simon Knott → Netlify | Orchestration | OSS job queue for serverless; creator acqui-hired by Netlify (2022), project effectively unmaintained |
| Rayrift | solo developer | Memory Layer | Developer-focused memory layer listed for takeover/acquisition on HN, Jan 31, 2026 — a marker of how crowded the low end got |
| Rebuff | Protect AI | Guardrails | Early prompt-injection detector (1.5k stars) — archived May 16, 2025, before the acquisition even closed |
| Relay.app | Relay | Workflow Automation | The human-in-the-loop pioneer with per-step approvals; shutting down — free accounts Aug 15, paid Sep 14, 2026, no acquirer named |
| Revue | Twitter/X | Email & Lifecycle | Twitter's newsletter play, shut down Jan 2023 in the Musk-era cuts; its users scattered to Substack, beehiiv, and Ghost |
| Roo Code | Roo Code Inc. | Coding Agent | Shut down May 15, 2026; team pivoted to Roomote — successors: Zoo Code, Kilo Code |
| ScaleFactor | — | Accounting | The category's first cautionary tale: ~$100M raised for 'AI accounting' that was largely humans behind the curtain; shut down June 2020 — press-reported, primary sources now paywalled |
| Slate | slatedocs (community) | Docs & Help | The classic three-pane API docs generator (36.1k stars) — creator pulled it from GitHub Jan 2026 in protest; repo archived read-only Feb 4, 2026, last release 2023 |
| Solvvy | Zoom | Support Agent | Early self-service resolution engine — acquired by Zoom 2022, folded into Zoom Virtual Agent |
| Sora / Sora 2 | OpenAI | Video | The graveyard headliner: app discontinued Apr 26, 2026 (announced Mar 24), API shuts Sep 24, 2026. Peaked ~3.3M downloads/mo (Nov 2025), collapsed under 500k users at ~$1M/day burn; Disney's $1B partnership got under an hour's notice |
| Stable Video Diffusion | Stability AI | Video | The category's first open weights (2023); lineage abandoned amid Stability's restructuring |
| Techstars J.P. Morgan programs | Techstars / J.P. Morgan | Mentors & Advisors | The largest corporate-backed accelerator partnership of its era, covering underrepresented-founder programs in several US cities; ended Aug 2024 alongside 17% staff cuts |
| TensorZero | TensorZero | Model Router | Rust gateway + LLMOps stack; archived its repo and shut down Jun 12, 2026, returning remaining capital — the category's starkest OSS casualty |
| TinyLetter | Mailchimp/Intuit | Email & Lifecycle | The beloved minimalist newsletter tool; shut down Feb 2024 — its heirs are Buttondown and beehiiv's free tier |
| Tortoise-TTS | neonbjb (James Betker) | Voice | The 2022 OSS ancestor of the modern wave; author joined OpenAI, repo archived in spirit |
| Unify | Unify AI | Model Router | Benchmark-driven LLM router (a16z-backed, 2024) — router retired; company pivoted to 'AI teammates' workflow agents by 2026 |
| VASA-1 | Microsoft Research | Avatar Presenter | Startlingly good real-time talking-face research (2024) that Microsoft declined to release over deepfake risk — the category's ghost |
| Write of Passage | David Perell | Taste | The graveyard headline: 2,000+ students from 72 countries, five-week cohorts at $3,795–3,995, shut down after its final cohort Oct 7–Nov 13 2024. Perell's stated reason was cohort economics, not demand |
| Yara | Yara AI | Founder Health | AI therapy app shut down by its own founder (Nov 2025), who concluded AI chatbots are unsafe for serious mental-health issues — read before trusting a bot with rank-2 work |
| Zep Community Edition | Zep | Memory Layer | The self-hosted OSS memory server that built Zep's following — deprecated, code moved to legacy/; cloud-only now |
| Zepl | → DataRobot | Warehouse & Notebooks | Zeppelin-lineage notebook cloud; acquired by DataRobot (2021), product gone |
Renamed (40)
| Tool | Maker | Category | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anything (ex-Create.xyz) | Anything | Vibe Builder | Rebranded from Create.xyz; mobile-app-from-prompt with $11M Series A at $100M valuation |
| BetaPage | BetaPage → Pitchwall | Launch Channels | Startup listing directory; betapage.co now redirects to pitchwall.co |
| Bizee | Bizee (renamed from Incfile, 2023) | Incorporation | $0 + state fee mass-market formation; 1M+ businesses since 2004 under the Incfile then Bizee brands |
| Brevo | Brevo (ex-Sendinblue, renamed 2023) | Email & Lifecycle | European all-in-one (email/SMS/CRM); pay-per-email pricing suits huge lists with low send frequency |
| Capchase | Capchase | Capital | GRAVEYARD (for founders): left founder-facing RBF for B2B buy-now-pay-later vendor financing. Raised $200M+ in debt and equity May 2026 to scale it; 97% of applications decided in 30 seconds across 9 countries. Useful if you sell software, not if you're financing it |
| Cloudflare Browser Run | Cloudflare | Browser Agent | Browser Rendering rebranded Apr 2026 with native WebMCP support; 120 concurrent browsers on Workers |
| Coda | → Superhuman | Knowledge Wiki | Acquired by Grammarly (announced Dec 2024); coda.io now redirects to superhuman.com — lives on as Superhuman Docs (see top 5) |
| Conductor OSS | Netflix → community/Orkes | Orchestration | Netflix archived its repo Dec 2023; development continued in the community conductor-oss fork stewarded by Orkes |
| DALL-E 3 | OpenAI | Image | The name that defined the category, retired in practice — superseded by the autoregressive gpt-image line (gpt-image-1 Apr 2025 → 1.5 Dec 2025 → 2 Apr 2026) |
| Databricks One | Databricks | BI Copilot | Renamed to Genie on Apr 26, 2026 to unify the business-user surface with the chat agent |
| Describely (ex-Copysmith) | Describely | Content Engine | Copysmith's 2023 rebrand into product-description tooling — the copy-tool generation surviving by narrowing; not re-verified for this edition |
| Duet AI for Workspace | Decks | The prior brand for Google's slide AI — renamed Gemini for Workspace (2024), then dissolved into base plans | |
| Edge Copilot Mode | Microsoft | Browser Agent | Agentic browsing brand (Jul 2025) retired May 13, 2026 — features folded into core Edge, free |
| Elicit (Ought era) | Ought | Research Engine | Nonprofit research lab that built Elicit; spun the product out as a PBC in 2023 — listed so the lineage isn't mistaken for a separate tool |
| Happier | Happier Inc. (ex-Ten Percent Happier) | Founder Health | Dan Harris's skeptic-friendly meditation app, rebranded from Ten Percent Happier in 2024 |
| Horizons | Horizons → Remote People | Hiring & EOR | joinhorizons.com now redirects to remotepeople.com (EOR from $199/mo, 150+ countries) as of Aug 2026 — apparent rebrand/absorption; connection not press-confirmed |
| Hotjar | Contentsquare | Analytics | Heatmaps/replay brand absorbed into Contentsquare after the 2021 acquisition; capabilities live on under the CSQ platform |
| Intercom Resolution Bot | Intercom | Support Agent | The pre-LLM deflection bot — superseded by Fin in 2023; 'deflection' died with it |
| J.P. Morgan Workplace Solutions | J.P. Morgan (ex-Global Shares, acq. 2022) | Equity | globalshares.com now redirects to jpmorganworkplacesolutions.com; enterprise share-plan admin, an AngelList migration partner |
| Kintent | → TrustCloud | Compliance | Renamed TrustCloud in 2023, pivoting from checklist compliance to programmatic trust assurance |
| Laika | → Thoropass | Compliance | Rebranded to Thoropass in 2023 as it leaned into in-house audit delivery |
| Launch House | Launch House | Community | Community model abandoned. The IRL founder-house membership network is gone; launchhouse.com is now a founder-led early-stage fund page with a portfolio and no membership offer |
| MemGPT | UC Berkeley → Letta | Memory Layer | The Oct 2023 paper/project that started the category — renamed Letta with the Sep 2024 commercialization |
| Microsoft Credentials | Microsoft | Verified Skill | In active churn: AI-102 and AI-900 retired Jun 30, 2026; successors AI-103 (Azure AI App and Agent Developer) and AI-901 entered beta Apr 21, 2026, plus AB-620 AI Agent Builder Associate |
| Microsoft Foundry guardrails | Microsoft | Guardrails | Prompt Shields, spotlighting, PII, groundedness plus agent-era previews: task adherence, tool-call and tool-response scanning, network egress controls. Azure AI Foundry renamed Microsoft Foundry in 2026 |
| Movio | HeyGen | Avatar Presenter | HeyGen's original brand name, retired 2023 |
| MultiOn | MultiOn → AGI Inc. | Browser Agent | Early browser-agent API; multion.ai now redirects to theagi.company — pivoted to on-device phone/PC agents (AGI-0), browser product gone |
| Optro (ex-FairNow) | Optro | AI-Act Readiness | fairnow.ai now redirects to optro.ai (Aug 2026); 25+ frameworks incl. EU AI Act and ISO 42001, claims 50%+ of Fortune 500 |
| Pebl | Pebl (ex-Velocity Global) | Hiring & EOR | Velocity Global rebranded to Pebl (velocityglobal.com now redirects); EOR in 185+ countries with 'Alfie' AI assistant; quote-only flat-rate pricing |
| Pepper (ex-Pepper Content) | Pepper | Content Engine | Rebranded pepper.inc — now an AI + expert-talent organic-growth service (SEO/GEO/content) for 250+ enterprises; a services play, not software |
| Pipe | Pipe | Capital | GRAVEYARD (for founders): wound down the direct SaaS revenue-trading marketplace in early 2024. Now embedded Capital-as-a-Service delivered only through partners — UberEats, GoCardless, Boulevard, Housecall Pro, Live Payments. ~50% workforce cut Nov 2025, CEO change Dec 2025. You can no longer apply directly |
| Project Mariner | Google DeepMind | Browser Agent | Research browser agent (Dec 2024) folded into Gemini in Chrome, May 2026 |
| QuickSight Q | AWS | BI Copilot | The standalone NLQ add-on, superseded by and folded into Amazon Q in QuickSight |
| Robust Intelligence | Cisco | Guardrails | Acquired 2024; brand retired into Cisco AI Defense — the first of the AI-guardrail startups to be absorbed |
| Salesforce Essentials | Salesforce | CRM | The old $25 small-business SKU — retired and replaced by Starter Suite |
| timeOS | timeOS | Meeting Capture | timeos.ai now redirects to timeless.day (observed Aug 2026) — rebrand/pivot; original product no longer marketed |
| TurboMCP (ex-mcp.run) | Dylibso | MCP Connectors | mcp.run now 302-redirects to turbomcp.ai — the Wasm-servlet marketplace pivoted into a self-hosted enterprise MCP gateway (RBAC, DLP, AI kill-switch) |
| TweetDeck → X Pro | X Corp. | Social | The original free power-scheduler, renamed X Pro and paywalled behind X Premium in 2023 — the event that seeded this whole third-party category's X dependence |
| valet.team | TheWorkCompany / tao.ai | Fractional Executives | Listed in earlier canon as the 'fractional operators' pick. Verified Aug 2026: valet.team 302-redirects to tao.ai/valet, and the service is now AI-agent deployment — assessment, agentic crews, monitoring — not a fractional-executive network. Repositioned; no longer a route to a human CxO. |
| Windsurf | Cognition | Coding Agent | Brand retired Jun 2, 2026 — became Devin Desktop after the 2025 Google licensing / Cognition acquisition saga |
Acquired (85)
| Tool | Maker | Category | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adept | Adept → Amazon | Browser Agent | The original 'AI that uses your software' startup ($415M raised); acqui-hired by Amazon Jun 2024 — the category's cautionary tale |
| Aim Security | Cato Networks (acquired for ~$350M) | Guardrails | AI security posture and runtime controls absorbed into a SASE platform — the same consolidation pattern as Lakera and Prompt Security |
| Airbase | Paylocity | Spend Management | Spend-management platform acquired by Paylocity (2024, ~$325M); folded into HR/payroll suite |
| Albert.ai | Zoomd | Paid Ads | The original 'autonomous AI marketer' (2016); acquired by Zoomd, still maintained for enterprise cross-channel — a cautionary tale of being right too early |
| Aporia | Aporia → Coralogix | Evals & Observability | ML/LLM observability + guardrails, acquired by Coralogix (Dec 2024); now Coralogix's AI Center |
| Arc | Arc → Axos | Banking | Startup treasury/cash-management platform ('intelligent cash management for technology companies') — site now banners 'Arc is joining Axos'; terms and timeline undisclosed |
| Astra DB / DataStax | DataStax → IBM | Vector Store | Cassandra-based vector DB; DataStax acquisition by IBM closed 2025 — vector search folded into watsonx orbit |
| AuditBoard | AuditBoard / Hg | Compliance | Enterprise audit-and-risk suite acquired by Hg for ~$3B (2024) — where compliance graduates when the GRC team outnumbers your startup |
| Bee | Bee → Amazon | Meeting Capture | $50 always-listening wearable acquihired by Amazon (Jul 2025) — ambient capture moved adjacent to element Mm |
| Bench | Employer.com → Mainstreet | Accounting | THE graveyard-and-back story: raised $113M, abruptly shut Dec 27, 2024 ($65.4M liabilities, $2.8M cash), rescued by Employer.com Dec 30; operates today under Mainstreet claiming 35,000+ customers |
| BetterCloud | CoreStack | Spend Management | Veteran end-to-end SMP with spend module and a 3x-ROI-in-90-days guarantee; now 'a CoreStack company' after ownership change from Vista |
| Business Talent Group | Heidrick & Struggles (acquired Apr 2021) | Fractional Executives | The enterprise end of on-demand talent — project leaders, consultants and SMEs, delivered with Atreus (DACH) and Chiefs Group (Brazil). Publishes the best survey data in the category (Talent Lens, n=3,810). Too heavy and too expensive for a startup. |
| Byteboard | Karat (ex-Google Area 120) | Verified Skill | Project-based, real-world coding interview; acquired by Karat and now folded into its platform |
| Capbase | MainStreet (acquirer) | Incorporation | Incorporation + cap table platform, now branded 'Capbase by MainStreet' post-acquisition; site still sells $999/yr but content freshness is unverifiable — treat with caution |
| Capdesk → Carta Europe | Carta (acq. Sep 2022) | Equity | The UK/EU challenger, absorbed and rebranded as Carta's European arm |
| Chorus.ai | Chorus → ZoomInfo | Meeting Capture | Sales conversation intelligence, acquired by ZoomInfo for $575M (2021) — the category's first big exit; sales CI now lives in GTM tooling, not here |
| Clearbit | HubSpot | Enrichment | The original enrichment API, acquired by HubSpot (closed Feb 2024); standalone product gone — clearbit.com is now a 'joined HubSpot' landing page pointing to Breeze |
| Cognigy | NICE (acquired) | Voice Support | Enterprise conversational/voice AI acquired by NICE for a reported ~$955M (announced Jun 2025); now sold as NiCE Cognigy, 1B+ annual interactions |
| Dia | The Browser Company → Atlassian | Browser Agent | AI browser acquired with TBC for $610M cash (Sep 2025); pivoting toward enterprise knowledge work; Arc left in maintenance |
| Drift | Drift → Salesloft | AI SDR | Conversational-marketing pioneer (inbound SDR ancestor) — acquired by Salesloft Feb 2024, brand since retired into Salesloft's platform |
| Easop → Remote Equity | Remote (acq. Apr 2024) | Equity | Global stock-option administration for EOR/international employees, folded into Remote's platform; the EOR side lives in element Hr |
| Elai.io | Panopto | Avatar Presenter | Training-video avatar tool acquired by Panopto (announced on-site, 2025); product continues inside the Panopto suite |
| Evisort | Workday | Legal | AI document-intelligence CLM acquired by Workday (announced Sep 17, 2024); now contract intelligence inside the HR/finance suite |
| Exceed.ai | Exceed → Genesys | AI SDR | First-wave AI SDR acquired by Genesys (2021) — the category consolidates into platforms in every cycle |
| Fern (independent) | Birch Solutions | Docs & Help | Independent era ended Jan 8, 2026 — now 'a Postman company'; see top 5 entry |
| Forethought | Zendesk | Support Agent | Self-improving AI-agent platform — acquired by Zendesk; announced Mar 11, closed Mar 26, 2026 |
| Galileo AI | Google (acquired 2025) | Design | Pioneer text-to-UI startup; usegalileo.ai now 302-redirects to Google Stitch |
| Graphite | Graphite (formerly SpareHire) → Toptal | Fractional Executives | 12,000+ vetted independent experts, consultants and executives in finance, strategy and corporate functions. Acquired by Toptal on Jan 7, 2026 — the biggest consolidation event this category has had. |
| Hashboard | → Hex | Warehouse & Notebooks | Metrics-first BI; team joined Hex with the May 2025 Series C |
| Heap | Contentsquare | Analytics | The autocapture pioneer, now the product-analytics half of Contentsquare's 'Experience Intelligence' platform; keeps its brand, sales-led pricing |
| Hyperquery | → Deepnote | Warehouse & Notebooks | SQL doc-notebook; absorbed into Deepnote |
| Insightly | Insightly (merged with Unbounce) | CRM | Once a startup-CRM contender; merged with Unbounce in 2024 and faded from the early-stage conversation |
| Intello | SailPoint | Spend Management | Early SaaS-ops/shadow-IT startup, acquired by SailPoint in 2021 — the first sign this category exits into identity |
| Langfuse (company) | Langfuse → ClickHouse | Evals & Observability | Acquired by ClickHouse (Jan 2026); product continues under its own brand — see top 5 |
| Lemon Squeezy | Stripe (acquired Jul 2024) | Payments | The indie-MoR darling; re-platformed onto Stripe Managed Payments Jan 28, 2026 — still open for signups, now effectively Stripe's MoR front door |
| Leonardo.ai | Canva (acquired Jul 2024) | Image | Prosumer generation platform (Lucid model line) powering Canva's AI features; increasingly a Canva feature rather than a standalone frontier lab — Canva itself belongs to element De |
| Lexion | Docusign | Legal | AI contract-workflow startup acquired by Docusign for $165M (May 2024); tech folded into Docusign IAM |
| Limitless / Rewind | Limitless → Meta | Meeting Capture | Acquired by Meta; Pendant sales ended Dec 5, 2025, Rewind capture disabled Dec 19, 2025, existing users free through 2026 — personal always-on capture folds into Big Tech wearables |
| m3ter | Salesforce (acquired) | Payments | Usage-metering-and-rating layer for B2B SaaS, now 'm3ter from Salesforce' — aimed at Salesforce/NetSuite revenue stacks, not startups |
| Magnific | Freepik (acquired 2024) | Image | The upscaler/enhancer standard for making AI images print-ready; now inside Freepik's suite |
| Manus Browser Operator | Manus → Meta | Browser Agent | Extension-based browser operator from the viral general agent — Manus acquired by Meta (2026, per manus.im); originally built on Browser-use |
| Mergent | Mergent → Resend | Orchestration | Task/cron API acquired by Resend (2024); product absorbed |
| Metronome | Stripe (acquired Dec 3, 2025) | Payments | The usage-billing layer behind OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Confluent — now Stripe's usage-billing product; site still runs standalone with 0.8%-of-billings pricing |
| Mode | ThoughtSpot | Warehouse & Notebooks | SQL-notebook BI pioneer; acquired by ThoughtSpot (2023), still sold under its own brand but roadmap serves the parent |
| Moveworks | ServiceNow | Support Agent | Employee/IT support agents — acquired by ServiceNow for $2.85B (2025); adjacent category, not customer support |
| Narrative Science | Salesforce / Tableau | BI Copilot | The original natural-language-generation BI company, acquired by Salesforce into Tableau (Dec 2021); brand retired, tech absorbed into Tableau's data-storytelling features — the category's first cautionary tale |
| Neon | Databricks | Deploy | Serverless Postgres with branching (a natural fit for branch-per-agent workflows); acquired ~$1B May 2025, still sold standalone as the developer face of Databricks Lakebase |
| Neon (pgvector serverless) | Neon → Databricks | Vector Store | Serverless Postgres with pgvector; acquired by Databricks May 2025 (~$1B reported) — vectors ride into the lakehouse ecosystem |
| NetSpring | Optimizely | Analytics | Warehouse-native analytics acquired by Optimizely (2024), now Optimizely Analytics inside its DXP |
| Nexa SDK | Qualcomm (acq. Nexa AI) | Small / Local Model | Day-0 NPU/GPU/CPU runtime for PC, mobile, IoT; Nexa AI acquired by Qualcomm Mar 21, 2026 — chipmakers buying the local-inference layer |
| North One | North One → Relay | Banking | SMB neobank whose domain now 302-redirects to relayfi.com — absorbed into Relay in 2026; migration terms undisclosed |
| OpenMeter | Kong (acquired) | Payments | Open-source usage metering (Apache-2.0) for token/API billing; managed version lives on as Kong Konnect Metering & Billing |
| Pattern89 | → Shutterstock | Paid Ads | AI ad-performance prediction; acquired by Shutterstock (2021) and absorbed — early graveyard of the category |
| Payoneer WFM (ex-Skuad) | Payoneer | Hiring & EOR | Skuad acquired by Payoneer (Aug 2024), now 'Payoneer Workforce Management'; EOR from $199, contractors from $19 in 160+ countries |
| Pencil | Brandtech Group | Paid Ads | Multi-model AI ad generation for enterprises (L'Oréal, Unilever); claims 79% ROAS improvement; acquired by Brandtech 2023, alive and enterprise-only |
| Pipedream | Pipedream → Workday | Workflow Automation | Code-level workflows + 3,000+ connectors for AI agents; definitive agreement with Workday Nov 19, 2025, closing by Jan 31, 2026 — being folded into Workday's agent platform |
| PlayHT / PlayAI | PlayAI → Meta | Voice | Acquired by Meta Jul 11, 2025 (Bloomberg; undisclosed) — team absorbed into Meta's voice efforts; play.ht product still online but effectively in maintenance |
| Postmark | ActiveCampaign | Email & Lifecycle | Transactional specialist prized for deliverability speed; acquired 2022, still running as a distinct product |
| Prisma AIRS | Palo Alto Networks (ex-Protect AI) | Guardrails | Where Protect AI landed after the ~$500M acquisition completed Jul 22, 2025 — model scanning, runtime AI security, agent posture. Enterprise-only, no public pricing |
| Prompt Security | SentinelOne (acquired 2025, ~$250M) | Guardrails | GenAI prompt/response inspection folded into SentinelOne's platform two years after founding — an early sign the standalone LLM-firewall category wouldn't stay standalone |
| PullRequest | → HackerOne | Code Review | Human code-review-as-a-service marketplace, acquired by HackerOne (2022) and absorbed into its security offering |
| Qualified (Piper / PiperX) | Qualified → Salesforce | AI SDR | The inbound AI SDR leader ($146M raised); Salesforce acquisition announced Dec 2025, closed Apr 1, 2026 — Piper folds into Agentforce |
| Rephrase.ai | Adobe | Avatar Presenter | Acquired by Adobe (Nov 2023) — the category's first big exit; standalone service wound down 2024 |
| Rewatch | Rewatch → Atlassian | Meeting Capture | Meeting-video hub acquired by Atlassian (2023) and folded into the Loom/Atlassian stack |
| Safeguard Global (payroll division) | → Deel | Hiring & EOR | Enterprise payroll division acquired by Deel (Mar 2025) — the consolidation bellwether: legacy global payroll folding into the new EOR giants |
| Sastrify | Deel | Spend Management | European SaaS procurement platform — 'joined Deel to revolutionize software management'; expect absorption into Deel IT |
| Scrunch AI | Scrunch → Sitecore | Answer Engines (GEO) | Acquired by Sitecore Jun 3, 2026 (terms undisclosed; ~$225M per press reports) — first big GEO exit, now the AI-visibility layer of a CMS/DXP |
| Silicon Valley Bank | First Citizens Bank | Capital | GRAVEYARD: the venture-debt default until the March 2023 failure; now a First Citizens division. Still lends, but the concentration lesson reshaped how startups hold cash |
| Snyk Agent Scan / MCP-Scan | Snyk (ex-Invariant Labs, Jun 24, 2025) | Guardrails | The team that publicly demonstrated MCP tool poisoning in Apr 2025, now Snyk Labs; scans MCP servers and agent skills for poisoned tool descriptions |
| Statsig | Amplitude (team at OpenAI since Sep 2025) | Analytics | Flags + experimentation + analytics at 1T+ events/day; team went to OpenAI (2025), platform joined Amplitude May 5, 2026 and keeps shipping — the near-miss for the top 5 |
| Stoplight | SmartBear | Docs & Help | API design/docs platform acquired by SmartBear (2024); still sold, but innovation energy moved to SmartBear's API Hub |
| SVB (First Citizens) | First Citizens Bank | Banking | The name that defined (and detonated) startup banking — now a division of $236B-asset First Citizens; still banks 50% of the 2026 Forbes Fintech 50 and remains the venture-debt relationship play |
| Tavily | Tavily (Nebius subsidiary) | Research Engine | Search/extract/crawl API for agents — 2M+ developers, 300M+ requests/mo; raised $25M Series A then became a Nebius subsidiary (2026) |
| Tenyx | Salesforce (acquired) | Voice Support | Voice-AI startup acquired by Salesforce (Sep 2024) to power Agentforce voice — talent/tech absorbed, product gone |
| Trelica | 1Password | Spend Management | Well-liked SMP acquired Jan 7, 2025; now powers 1Password Extended Access Management — SaaS spend features persist inside a security product |
| Trieve | Trieve → Mintlify | Docs & Help | RAG/search infrastructure acquired by Mintlify (Jul 2025) — now powers its assistant and agent retrieval |
| Triplebyte | Karat | Verified Skill | The original take-a-test-once, skip-to-onsite network; acquired by Karat in 2022 and largely absorbed — the brand now survives mainly as 'Karat NextGen' assessments referenced by third parties |
| TruEra / TruLens | TruEra → Snowflake | Evals & Observability | ML-observability pioneer acquired by Snowflake (May 2024); TruLens OSS evals live on under Snowflake |
| Tugboat Logic | → OneTrust | Compliance | Early SOC 2 automation pioneer acquired by OneTrust (Oct 2021); brand absorbed into OneTrust Certification Automation |
| Uizard | Miro (acquired Aug 2024) | Design | AI UI generator (Autodesigner 2.0) still running standalone under Miro; screenshot-to-editable-mockup |
| Ultimate.ai | Zendesk | Support Agent | Acquired by Zendesk Feb 2024 — became the core of Zendesk AI agents |
| Vendr | Vertice | Spend Management | The SaaS-buying pioneer, now 'a Vertice company' — lives on as free price checks and negotiation agents on 130k+ deal dataset (announcement date not publicly stated) |
| Weavy | Figma (acquired Oct 2025, >$200M) | Design | Node-based AI image/video editing startup, rebranded Figma Weave and integrated at Config 2026 |
| Weights & Biases (company) | W&B → CoreWeave | Evals & Observability | The whole company was acquired by CoreWeave (2025, reported ~$1.7B) — Weave continues as its LLM-ops arm |
| xAI (standalone) | xAI → SpaceX | Frontier Model | Ceased to exist as an independent company Feb 2, 2026 — absorbed into SpaceX at $230B, now part of public SPCX |
Sunsetting (12)
| Tool | Maker | Category | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Q Developer | AWS | Coding Agent | Sunsetting into Kiro; signups closed May 2026, end-of-life Apr 30, 2027 |
| AngelList (legacy cap table) | AngelList | Equity | Sunset Aug 6, 2025 — no new features, new access restricted to RUV/CV users; official migration partners: Pulley and J.P. Morgan Workplace Solutions. RUVs themselves live on under element Cp |
| AutoGen | Microsoft | Agent Framework | Maintenance mode since Apr 2026 — the first major framework sunset; 54k+ developers pointed at Agent Framework, AG2, or a frozen 0.2 |
| Bolster Prime | Bolster Networks, Inc. | Fractional Executives | The 2022 paid CEO-membership + Bolster Ventures pairing. Bolster Ventures continues as a fund; the Prime membership no longer appears in Bolster's current product navigation — assume discontinued unless they tell you otherwise. |
| ChatGPT Atlas | OpenAI | Browser Agent | Standalone AI browser (Oct 21, 2025) retiring Aug 9, 2026 after ~9 months; agent capabilities folding back into ChatGPT and Codex |
| Firebase Studio | Vibe Builder | Signups closed Jun 22, 2026; full shutdown Mar 22, 2027 — users pushed to AI Studio (prompt-to-app) and Antigravity. Even Google couldn't hold this lane | |
| Gemini CLI | Coding Agent | Free individual access ended Jun 18, 2026 — enterprise-only via Code Assist; succeeded by Antigravity CLI | |
| Gemini Code Assist on GitHub | Code Review | The free consumer review agent was shut down Jul 17, 2026 (deprecated Jun 18) — enterprise version via Google Cloud continues; same retreat pattern as Gemini CLI | |
| Ollama Cloud Max tier | Ollama Inc. | Small / Local Model | The $100/mo Max tier paused new signups mid-2026 — capacity constraints reach even the local-first vendors' cloud arms |
| Semantic Kernel | Microsoft | Agent Framework | The enterprise .NET pioneer (28k stars), folded into Agent Framework; v1.x maintained at least a year past MAF GA, but the road ends there |
| StackBlitz classic / Bolt V1 agent | StackBlitz | Vibe Builder | Bolt's V1 agent retires Aug 2026 with a destructive migration path — the category's first forced-upgrade churn event |
| ZoomInfo legacy Enterprise API | ZoomInfo | Enrichment | The old api-docs.zoominfo.com Enterprise API is formally deprecated in favor of docs.zoominfo.com / GTM.AI connectors — migrate before renewals |
Fading — alive, but watch closely (76)
"Fading" is a judgment call, marked conservatively: frozen commits, stale blogs, silent teams. These may recover; buy with eyes open.
| Tool | Maker | Category | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| AdEspresso | Hootsuite | Paid Ads | The 2010s Meta-ads optimizer; site still up but blog frozen since ~2023 — pre-AI-era tooling the platforms absorbed |
| Adobe XD | Adobe | Design | In maintenance mode since 2023 — no new features, quietly kept for existing customers; Adobe ceded UI design to Figma after the blocked $20B acquisition |
| AI21 Labs | AI21 | Frontier Model | Jamba long-context line continues but far from frontier pace |
| Amazon Polly | AWS | Voice | The 2016-era workhorse — fastest on AA's index (1,149 chars/sec) and cheap, but generative-voice quality has passed it by |
| anch.AI | anch.AI (Stockholm) | AI-Act Readiness | Ethical-AI screening pioneer (methodology since 2016, ~200 use cases assessed); site live but undated — momentum unclear in 2026 |
| Apache Zeppelin | Apache | Warehouse & Notebooks | The pre-Jupyter-dominance big-data notebook; releases sparse, mindshare gone |
| BabyAGI | Yohei Nakajima | Agent Framework | The 105-line task-loop that co-launched the 2023 agent craze; reframed as an experimental 'self-building' toy in 2024, quiet since |
| Bolster | Bolster Networks, Inc. (High Alpha; Matt Blumberg) | Fractional Executives | The VC-adjacent exec marketplace — 20,000+ executives, 350+ placements, 5 days to first interview, $2,500 upfront + 20% markup. Status flag: site footer still reads © 2025 and the blog's last post is Mar 2025; marketing has drifted toward retained executive search. Still transacting, but no longer setting the pace. |
| Bosh | Relevance AI | AI SDR | The once-hyped 'AI BDR' template — its dedicated page now 302s into a generic agent marketplace; emblematic of general-platform SDR retreat |
| Cerebral | Cerebral Inc. | Founder Health | Cautionary tale of VC-scaled psychiatry: $7M FTC data/cancellation settlement (Apr 2024); founding CEO's next venture Zealthy moved against by FTC/DOJ (Apr 2026) |
| Clarity.fm | Startups.co (acq. from Dan Martell, 2015) | Mentors & Advisors | The per-minute expert-call pioneer. Still reachable but effectively unmaintained — homepage renders as a loading shell in Aug 2026 and the roster has not refreshed in years |
| Coa | Coa Inc. | Founder Health | 'Gym for mental health' with founder-aimed emotional-fitness classes; raised $3M (2021) but site copyright frozen at 2023 with no visible updates since |
| Cohere | Cohere | Frontier Model | Exited the frontier race; pivoted to private-deployment enterprise AI (North platform) — no longer a general-model contender |
| DBRX | Databricks | Open Weights | Mar 2024 MoE splash; no successor — Databricks now hosts others' open weights (incl. Inkling) instead |
| Deep Lake | Activeloop | Vector Store | Tensor/vector data lake for multimodal ML; mindshare faded as LanceDB took the format-centric lane |
| Delve | Delve | Compliance | The integrity lesson: $32M at $300M (Insight, Jul 2025) → whistleblower 'fake compliance' receipts (Mar 2026) → removed from YC's directory (Apr 4, 2026) → customer security incidents through Apr 2026. Site still live, claims 1,500+ customers; trust is the product, and it broke |
| Design Details | Brian Lovin & Marshall Bock | Taste | 300+ episodes over five years and a foundational back catalogue, but the site's copyright still reads 2015–2023 — treat as an archive, not a live feed |
| Dia | Nari Labs | Voice | Viral open 1.6B dialogue model (Apr 2025) with nonverbal tags; momentum cooled as Chatterbox and Fish absorbed the OSS mindshare |
| Dropbox Paper | Dropbox | Knowledge Wiki | Once a contender, in maintenance mode for years as Dropbox chases Dash (AI search) |
| Elpha | Elpha | Community | Women-in-tech community, once the best free network of its kind. Its TLS certificate had expired as of Aug 6, 2026 and the site would not load over HTTPS — treat as unmaintained until proven otherwise |
| Falcon | TII (UAE) | Open Weights | 2023's open-weight hope; releases continue but mindshare has collapsed against the Chinese cadence |
| Firebolt | Firebolt | Warehouse & Notebooks | Efficiency-pitched cloud warehouse for data apps; squeezed between ClickHouse and the giants, momentum quiet |
| GPT4All | Nomic AI | Small / Local Model | The 2023 pioneer of desktop local AI; releases stopped and GitHub issues openly ask 'is GPT4All dead?' — Nomic's focus moved to embeddings |
| Griptape | Griptape | Agent Framework | Python framework + managed cloud with an enterprise-security pitch; development cadence visibly slowed through 2026 |
| Grok (open releases) | xAI / SpaceX | Open Weights | Grok-1 (2024) and later token gestures aside, current-gen Grok weights stay closed; open-sourced the Grok Build CLI, not the model |
| Heroku | Salesforce | Deploy | The platform that invented git-push deploys entered 'sustaining engineering' Feb 9, 2026 — no new enterprise contracts, investment redirected to Salesforce AI; the category's cautionary tale |
| Highbeam | Highbeam | Banking | Was 'banking for ecommerce brands'; site now pitches a beta financing-comparison marketplace — the banking product appears shelved |
| Highrise | 37signals | CRM | The original simple CRM — closed to new signups since 2018, kept on life support for existing users; the genre's memento mori |
| Hour One | Hour One | Avatar Presenter | Presenter-video pioneer ('Reals'); site live but no visible funding or product momentum since its 2022 $20M round |
| Huginn | community (MIT) | Workflow Automation | The self-hosted 'agents' pioneer (2013, Ruby) — conceptually ahead of its time, development long quiet |
| Hunyuan Video | Tencent | Video | 2024's open-weight pioneer; quiet through 2026 as Wan and LTX took the open mantle |
| Jamba | AI21 | Open Weights | Hybrid SSM-transformer open weights; niche long-context uses, little 2026 momentum |
| Korbit AI | Korbit | Code Review | Mentor-style PR reviews with quality scoring; quiet through 2026 roundups |
| Lately | Lately AI | Content Engine | Long-form-to-social repurposing pioneer; momentum visibly slowed post-2024 — status uncertain, not re-verified |
| LawGeex | LawGeex | Legal | The 2014-era pioneer of AI contract review (its 2018 AI-vs-20-lawyers NDA study made the category); still selling but long since out-shouted by LLM-native rivals |
| Learn UI Design / Learn UX Design | Erik Kennedy | Taste | 5,000+ students, 60,000+ newsletter subscribers; individual enrollment closed as of Aug 2026 — waitlist only, team plans still open |
| Llama 4 (Scout / Maverick) | Meta | Open Weights | The former default, now Meta's terminal open offering — Behemoth never shipped, Meta pivoted to the closed Muse line (Apr 2026), llama.com now redirects to developer.meta.com/ai; still useful for Scout's 10M context and ecosystem maturity |
| Llama frontier line | Meta | Frontier Model | Llama 4 Scout/Maverick (Apr 2025) were the last open flagships; the Behemoth-class successor never shipped open — Meta's frontier effort moved to closed Muse Spark |
| llms.txt | Answer.AI proposal (Jeremy Howard, Sep 2024) | Answer Engines (GEO) | The category's cautionary tale: widely sold as a GEO must-have, but Ahrefs' Jul 2026 analysis of 137k domains found 97% of llms.txt files never get read by AI crawlers |
| Logseq | Logseq (AGPL-3.0) | Knowledge Wiki | Open-source outliner, 44k stars; the DB rewrite has been in beta for years and momentum has bled to Obsidian |
| Luma Photon | Luma AI | Image | Capable, cheap image line, but Luma's center of gravity is video (Ray models → element Vi); Photon has not kept frontier pace in 2026 |
| Marblism | Marblism | Vibe Builder | Early prompt-to-full-stack builder; pivoted to 'AI employee' agents through 2025–26 — effectively left the category |
| Martian | Martian (withmartian) | Model Router | Invented the 'model router' pitch ($9M, NEA/Prosus 2023; Accenture 2024) — has pivoted to AI interpretability research; router no longer the product |
| mcp-get | community | MCP Connectors | Early npm-style MCP installer/registry from the 2024–25 wave; site up but largely superseded by the official registry and client-native installs |
| Memary | community (MIT) | Memory Layer | Knowledge-graph agent memory, 2.6k stars — last release Oct 2024, momentum gone |
| MetaGPT | FoundationAgents (DeepWisdom) | Agent Framework | 'Software company as multi-agent' research hit; team's energy moved to the MGX app-builder product → see Vb |
| MLflow AI Gateway | Databricks (OSS) | Model Router | Deployments/gateway module inside MLflow; maintained but overshadowed — Databricks invests via Mosaic AI Gateway instead |
| Mochi 1 | Genmo | Video | Open-weight 2024 entrant; development quiet through 2026 |
| MyScale | MyScale (ClickHouse-based) | Vector Store | SQL vector DB on ClickHouse; quiet through 2025–26, community momentum stalled |
| On Deck (ODF) | On Deck / joinodf.com | Fractional Executives | Once the densest source of warm operator intros in startup land; cut 25% of staff in 2022 and scaled back the accelerator. ODF now runs as a lean founder fellowship. Historically important to this element's referral route, no longer load-bearing. |
| Open Interpreter | Open Interpreter | Coding Agent | Pioneer local code-execution agent; development quiet through 2026 |
| OpenAI Evals | OpenAI | Evals & Observability | The 2023 pioneer repo (18.6k stars, MIT) is quiet; the live product is the Evals API/dashboard inside the OpenAI platform — OpenAI-centric by design |
| OpenVoice | MyShell (MIT) | Voice | 2024's instant-cloning breakout; little movement since — superseded by Chatterbox-class models |
| Papr | Papr AI | Memory Layer | Former memory-API startup; site now sells AI GTM workflow apps — memory positioning quietly abandoned |
| Perplexity Ads | Perplexity | Paid Ads | Sponsored follow-up questions launched Nov 12, 2024 (Indeed, Whole Foods); program has gone quiet since — no public 2026 expansion while OpenAI's ad push accelerated |
| Phind | Phind Inc. | Research Engine | Developer answer engine of the 2023–24 wave; root page returned 404 to our crawler (Aug 2026) and momentum has visibly stalled — verify before depending on it |
| Pika 2.5 | Pika Labs | Video | Early mover now a social-effects niche player; still shipping but off the quality leaderboards |
| Playground | Playground AI | Image | Once a leading SD interface (Playground v3), pivoted to consumer logo/design tooling in 2025 — no frontier model since |
| Polywork | Polywork | Verified Skill | Timeline-style 'what I actually did' profile — the right idea, but activity on the site is sparse and no 2026 product news surfaced |
| Productiv | Productiv | Spend Management | Engagement-analytics SMP pioneer; site and messaging largely static through 2025–26 while rivals shipped AI-spend features |
| Querybook | Pinterest (OSS) | Warehouse & Notebooks | Open-source big-data notebook/IDE; maintenance-mode energy since the agent wave |
| Reka | Reka AI | Frontier Model | Small multimodal lab; capable mid-tier models, no frontier presence in 2026 |
| Roam Research | Roam Research | Knowledge Wiki | Invented the backlink era; development and community quiet through 2025–26 as users migrated to Obsidian/Tana |
| RouteLLM | LMSYS (research OSS) | Model Router | The academic cost-quality router that popularized learned routing (2024); repo largely quiet since — ideas absorbed by commercial routers |
| SadTalker | community (open source) | Avatar Presenter | 2023-era talking-head generator; historically important, effectively unmaintained |
| Soul Machines | Soul Machines | Avatar Presenter | Autonomous-animation digital people (NZ); early hype leader, quiet through 2025–26 |
| Stable Diffusion / Stability AI | Stability AI | Image | The category's founding open-source lab, now an enterprise services company (Brand Studio, custom models for EA/UMG/HubSpot; Stable Audio 3.0 is the 2026 flagship). No frontier image model since SD 3.5 (Oct 2024); UK High Court largely cleared it in the Getty case (Nov 2025). The open-weights torch passed to BFL |
| SuperAGI | SuperAGI | Agent Framework | Dev-first framework of 2023 that pivoted to packaged sales/CRM agents; framework repo momentum long gone |
| Sweep | Sweep AI (YC S23) | Code Review | Left the review/PR-bot business — pivoted to a JetBrains autocomplete/coding assistant |
| Techstars | Techstars | Capital | The legacy volume accelerator — historically ~$120K for 6% plus a $100K note. Materially contracted since 2024 as multiple city programs closed; verify the specific program still runs before applying |
| Tome | Magical Tome, Inc. | Decks | The 2023 category darling abandoned decks — homepage now leads 'Tome is now more than slides' and sells AI sales/buyer-research software; legacy $16/mo slides pricing page still live but unmaintained. The category's cautionary tale |
| Typeshare | TypeTools (Ship 30 for 30) | Social | Template-driven 'digital writing' platform (85k+ users since 2021); still alive but energy has shifted away from its atomic-essay moment |
| Vocode | community (MIT, ex-YC W23) | Voice Support | Early open-source voice-agent library (3.8k stars); repo alive but openly seeking community maintainers — momentum moved to LiveKit/Pipecat |
| What The Diff | Beyond Code | Code Review | Early AI PR-summary tool (2022 wave); superseded by full review agents |
| Wiki.js | requarks (AGPL) | Knowledge Wiki | Popular Node.js wiki; v2 stable but the long-promised v3 rewrite has crawled for years |
| Wordtune | AI21 Labs | Content Engine | Consumer rewriting assistant; AI21 refocused on enterprise models, leaving Wordtune in maintenance orbit — not re-verified |
Every claim above is dated and sourced from the elems dossiers — 1,421 tools tracked across 58 categories, verified 2026-08-06, including the 276 we found dead, renamed, acquired, or sunsetting. Rankings are editorial, never paid — the charter.
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