You asked about AI-powered Drug Discovery
1,912 people built something like it. 228 are gone.
That is 12% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 84 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2019-01-01 | YC1910 Multimodal AI Platform for Modality Agnostic Drug Discovery™ · 1910.ai | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | AI Inference Platform for Drug Discovery · tamarind.bio | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | Combining 3D cell culture & AI to translate drugs to clinical success · knownmed.com | acquired |
| 2023-01-01 | Generative AI for protein design · diffuse.bio | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | We use AI to design antibodies for intractable diseases · nabla.bio | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | YCNanograb Deliver genes to any cell with AI · nanograb.com | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | Gen AI molecular simulations that reproduce wetlab results · angstrom-ai.com | still up |
| 2025-06-01 | YCConvexia The world's first AI-maximalist pharma company · convexia.bio | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | YCWonderTx Extrapolative AI to unlock First-in-Class drugs · wondertx.ai | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | AI-native pharma company · atlasdiscovery.bio | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | AI for drug formulation · lavo.ai | gone |
| 2020-01-01 | Menten AI designs peptide and protein therapeutics using quantum… · menten.ai | still up |
| 2018-06-01 | Synkrino's AI, SATIS is a powerful, unbiased discovery system for… · synkrino.bio | still up |
| 2015-06-01 | We use human data and AI to develop better drugs faster. · vergegenomics.com | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | Unleashing the potential of DNA and RNA based therapies using AI · whitelabgx.com | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | Arpeggio Bio develops drugs targeting transcription factors using AI… · arpeggiobio.com | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | AI drug discovery platform for neurotherapeutics · exintherapeutics.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | Developing long-lasting drug formulations 50% faster · persist-ai.com | still up |
| 2026-01-01 | YCOrigin AI and Data for Cancer Therapeutics · origin.bio | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | AI-native materials discovery powered by unpublished experimental data · 83sciences.ai | still up |
| 2025-09-01 | YCExonic Exonic is an AI-native cell and gene therapeutics company. · exonic.ai | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | AI Powered Product Discovery · rubberduckylabs.io | gone |
| 2026-01-01 | Multimodal foundation models to predict uncollected patient biology · strandai.com | still up |
| 2026-01-01 | The first AI-powered uranium discovery company · terranox.ai | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | AI platform accelerating therapies for rare & inflammatory diseases. · gen1e.com | still up |
| 2015-01-01 | AI-powered technology enabler and digital transformer of American… · grubmarket.com | still up |
| 2015-06-01 | YCIronclad AI-powered contract management · ironcladapp.com | still up |
| 2022-05-05 | supermeme.ai | still up |
| 2022-10-17 | lex.page | still up |
| 2023-10-19 | autotab.com | still up |
| 2014-01-01 | YCUnbabel AI-powered Language Operations platform · unbabel.com | acquired |
| 2022-11-13 | podcast.adobe.com | still up |
| 2023-03-28 | regex.ai | still up |
| 2022-10-03 | exactbuyer.com | gone |
| 2022-11-18 | freesubtitles.ai | moved |
| 2023-06-01 | hnresumetojobs.com | still up |
| 2022-10-27 | whatthediff.ai | still up |
| 2022-04-04 | hirequotient.com | still up |
| 2022-01-31 | ideas-generator.com | gone |
| 2022-05-19 | depositphotos.com | still up |
| 2022-01-19 | dubverse.ai | still up |
| 2023-07-31 | learnlingo.dev | still up |
| 2022-07-22 | faceswapper.ai | still up |
| 2022-02-09 | substrata.me | unverified |
| 2017-06-01 | AI-powered checkout for retail. · standard.ai | still up |
| 2022-10-27 | speechanalyzer.elsaspeak.com | still up |
| 2022-04-28 | visily.ai | still up |
| 2022-01-04 | huski.ai | still up |
| 2022-05-31 | classtra.org | still up |
| 2022-10-31 | airbrush.ai | still up |
| 2022-05-24 | meetclockwork.com | unverified |
| 2022-04-29 | tradeswell.com | moved |
| 2022-07-12 | pixieapp.co | still up |
| 2023-07-03 | kadoa.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCAvoca AI-powered Sales Agent for Service-Based Industries · avoca.ai | still up |
| 2021-01-03 | headlime.com | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCRDash AI Powered Construction Management Software · rdash.io | still up |
| 2022-09-08 | tattoosai.com | still up |
| 2019-01-01 | YCGoLinks Intuitive, easy-to-remember short links - powered by AI. · golinks.io | still up |
| 2017-06-01 | AI-Powered Building Management · vergesense.com | still up |
How this compares
Y Combinator reports its own outcomes, including acquisitions. The other two are judged by asking the domain, so they are not measured the same way and are never averaged together.
Older launches have had longer to die, so this slope is expected. A year that broke it would mean something is wrong with the checking.
Matched on whole words in the title and description, so a launch can fall into two categories and plenty fall into none.
The register re-probes every domain it holds. Some that answered last month stop answering. We send that list — what went quiet, and what it was — once a month. Nothing else.
How this was made. Show HN entries are every post from 2021 to 2023 with at least five points that linked to its own domain; code hosts and free hosting are excluded, because a repository outlives the effort behind it. Product Hunt entries needed 100 votes — a far higher bar, so they are the promoted top slice rather than a like-for-like sample. Both are judged by asking the domain whether it still answers: gone means it no longer resolves, refuses the connection, serves a parking page, or says plainly that it shut down. An HTTP error is not counted as gone — a server answering 404 is one somebody still pays for, and an audit of 25 gone-calls found two such sites alive with only a moved homepage. Y Combinator entries use the status YC publishes itself, which is why only those can say acquired. Squatted domains — a lapsed name now serving somebody else's site — are not detected, so these figures run slightly low.