You asked about Search
41 people built something like it. 6 are gone.
That is 16% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 4 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2021-06-01 | Track & Boost Your Brand’s Visibility in AI Search · writesonic.com | 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 |
| 2019-01-01 | Talent AI improving quality of hire · searchlight.ai | acquired |
| 2024-01-01 | YCOnyx Open Source AI Chat · onyx.app | acquired |
| 2021-06-01 | YCCoLoop AI Copilot for insights & strategy · coloop.ai | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | Dramatically better search and ads for marketplaces · promoted.ai | acquired |
| 2025-01-01 | YCAthenaHQ Be the Answer in AI Search - AI SEO across SEO, GEO & AEO · athenahq.ai | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | AI research lab automating all of investing · ehl.markets | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCego AI applied research lab building synthetic sapience; human-like AI · egoai.com | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCunSurvey AI-led market research interviews, no scheduling, instant insights. · unsurvey.ai | acquired |
| 2024-01-01 | Applied AI Data Research Lab Encoding Human Expertise into Machines… · useocular.com | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | YCSID AI research lab for retrieval · sid.ai | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCStardex AI native ATS + CRM for executive search firms · stardex.com | 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 |
| 2025-09-01 | YCMoss Real-time semantic search for Conversational AI · moss.dev | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | YCAnara AI for researchers · anara.com | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | YCNitrode Frontier AI research to advance game development · nitrode.com | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | AI-powered equity research software · hudson-labs.com | still up |
| 2022-06-01 | YCPhind AI search engine · phind.com | gone |
| 2020-01-01 | YCArdis AI Transform your text data into a searchable knowledge graph · ardis.ai | gone |
| 2023-06-01 | AI Overview Search, as a Service · branch-ai.com | gone |
| 2023-01-01 | YCFactIQ Investment research data for AI agents · factiq.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCVersive AI-first user research platform · getversive.com | still up |
| 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 |
| 2024-01-01 | People search powered by AI · happenstance.ai | still up |
| 2026-01-01 | YCAemon The Forward-Deployed AI Research Engineer · aemon.ai | still up |
| 2026-01-01 | YCVela AI Recruiting Coordinator for Executive Search · tryvela.ai | still up |
| 2025-06-01 | YCPally Your personal AI Assistant · pally.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCGlimmer AI search for massive PDFs · withglimmer.com | gone |
| 2026-01-01 | YCCaptain Self-tuning file search for AI agents · captain.dev | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | Training the world's best AI model for quantitative finance. · prodigy.markets | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | AI agents to build B2B datasets · promptloop.com | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCAndi AI Search for the Next Generation · andiai.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCEpsilon AI Search Engine for Academic Research · epsilon-ai.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCLumona AI-enabled search engine featuring insights from social media. · lumona.ai | gone |
| 2025-06-01 | YCMotives Consumer focus groups run by AI · motives.ai | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | An AI agent for scientific research · undermind.ai | still up |
How this compares
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.