You asked about Search
56 people built something like it. 10 are gone.
That is 19% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 4 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-11-23 | scispace.com | unverified |
| 2023-02-21 | phind.com | unverified |
| 2022-10-03 | exactbuyer.com | gone |
| 2023-02-09 | podtext.ai | still up |
| 2022-01-04 | huski.ai | still up |
| 2023-07-03 | kadoa.com | still up |
| 2023-05-17 | getpinbot.com | still up |
| 2021-09-03 | examples.jina.ai | gone |
| 2021-06-01 | Track & Boost Your Brand’s Visibility in AI Search · writesonic.com | still up |
| 2021-10-03 | researchai.co | unverified |
| 2021-01-17 | share.streamlit.io | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | YCDepict GPT Search & Merchandising for fashion e-commerce · depict.ai | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | YCOutset AI-powered user interviews · outset.ai | still up |
| 2015-06-01 | ROSS is an AI-powered legal research platform that can read and… · rossintelligence.com | gone |
| 2021-02-04 | evertrove.co | unverified |
| 2024-01-01 | YCOnyx Open Source AI Chat · onyx.app | acquired |
| 2019-01-01 | Talent AI improving quality of hire · searchlight.ai | acquired |
| 2021-06-01 | YCCoLoop AI Copilot for insights & strategy · coloop.ai | still up |
| 2023-10-11 | opensourceconnections.com | unverified |
| 2022-07-01 | codesearch.ai | still up |
| 2021-07-28 | researchfin.ai | unverified |
| 2022-11-12 | enterpix.app | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | Dramatically better search and ads for marketplaces · promoted.ai | acquired |
| 2023-04-11 | thellm.app | gone |
| 2025-01-01 | YCAthenaHQ Be the Answer in AI Search - AI SEO across SEO, GEO & AEO · athenahq.ai | still up |
| 2026-08-25 | keenable.ai | unverified |
| 2024-01-01 | AI research lab automating all of investing · ehl.markets | still up |
| 2026-09-03 | aietalks.com | unverified |
| 2023-06-28 | blogseo.ai | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCego AI applied research lab building synthetic sapience; human-like AI · egoai.com | still up |
| 2022-09-08 | consensus.app | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | Applied AI Data Research Lab Encoding Human Expertise into Machines… · useocular.com | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCunSurvey AI-led market research interviews, no scheduling, instant insights. · unsurvey.ai | acquired |
| 2023-07-08 | stockstack.ai | gone |
| 2023-06-01 | YCSID AI research lab for retrieval · sid.ai | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | YCTrata AI-powered research desk for hedge funds · trytrata.com | still up |
| 2025-09-01 | Infrastructure for AI labs to focus on research. · sf-tensor.com | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCStardex AI native ATS + CRM for executive search firms · stardex.com | still up |
| 2022-11-25 | meepo.shop | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | YCAnara AI for researchers · anara.com | still up |
| 2025-09-01 | YCMoss Real-time semantic search for Conversational AI · moss.dev | still up |
| 2023-02-04 | relevanceai.com | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | AI-powered equity research software · hudson-labs.com | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | YCNitrode Frontier AI research to advance game development · nitrode.com | still up |
| 2026-08-30 | visiscan.app | unverified |
| 2022-09-08 | friday.education | unverified |
| 2022-06-01 | YCPhind AI search engine · phind.com | gone |
| 2026-01-01 | YCAemon The Forward-Deployed AI Research Engineer · aemon.ai | still up |
| 2020-01-01 | YCArdis AI Transform your text data into a searchable knowledge graph · ardis.ai | gone |
| 2025-06-01 | YCTheora Building medical school for AI Agents · theorahq.com | still up |
| 2025-09-01 | AI-powered market due diligence for investment decisions · diligencesquared.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCVersive AI-first user research platform · getversive.com | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | AI Overview Search, as a Service · branch-ai.com | gone |
| 2024-01-01 | People search powered by AI · happenstance.ai | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCFactIQ Investment research data for AI agents · factiq.com | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | Training the world's best AI model for quantitative finance. · prodigy.markets | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCAndi AI Search for the Next Generation · andiai.com | still up |
| 2026-01-01 | YCVela AI Recruiting Coordinator for Executive Search · tryvela.ai | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCEpsilon AI Search Engine for Academic Research · epsilon-ai.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCGlimmer AI search for massive PDFs · withglimmer.com | gone |
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.
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.