You asked about Search
108 people built something like it. 14 are gone.
That is 14% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 11 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2014-01-01 | YCAlgolia A developer-friendly and enterprise-grade search API. · algolia.com | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | YCConveo Growth through always‑on consumer understanding · conveo.ai | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCExa Web search rebuilt for LLMs · exa.ai | still up |
| 2020-06-01 | YCOsmind Platform for breakthrough mental health research and treatment · osmind.org | still up |
| 2010-06-01 | YCHipmunk Hipmunk takes the agony out of searching for flights, accommodations,… · hipmunk.com | acquired |
| 2012-01-01 | YCSwiftype Smart search for the modern team. · swiftype.com | acquired |
| 2021-01-01 | User research on autopilot. · greatquestion.co | still up |
| 2015-01-01 | YCPigeonly The affordable way to search, find & communicate with an incarcerated… · pigeonly.com | gone |
| 2022-01-01 | YCRally Agentic User Research Infrastructure · rallyuxr.com | still up |
| 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 |
| 2015-06-01 | ROSS is an AI-powered legal research platform that can read and… · rossintelligence.com | gone |
| 2025-01-01 | Applied research lab curating data solutions for foundation model… · afterquery.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCReducto The complete agentic document platform · reducto.ai | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | YCOutset AI-powered user interviews · outset.ai | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCShaped The real-time retrieval engine for search, feeds, and agents. · shaped.ai | still up |
| 2019-01-01 | Talent AI improving quality of hire · searchlight.ai | acquired |
| 2024-01-01 | YCOnyx Open Source AI Chat · onyx.app | acquired |
| 2019-01-01 | Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest… · ourworldindata.org | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCCoLoop AI Copilot for insights & strategy · coloop.ai | still up |
| 2018-06-01 | Virtual Lab Managers for scientists and biotech, research Labs · happilabs.org | acquired |
| 2025-01-01 | We build networks of AIs to simulate high-value audiences · societies.io | 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 |
| 2023-06-01 | YCParadeDB Unify application data, vectors, and full-text search in one Postgres · paradedb.com | still up |
| 2007-01-01 | YCOctopart Octopart is a search engine for electronic components · octopart.com | acquired |
| 2024-01-01 | AI research lab automating all of investing · ehl.markets | still up |
| 2024-09-01 | YCOrigami Get your perfect customers with one prompt · origami.chat | still up |
| 2018-06-01 | Research and analytics company focused on college students. · collegepulse.com | 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 |
| 2024-09-01 | YCAbundant Agent simulation and RL for researchers · abundant.ai | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCTrieve All-in-one API for search, RAG, & recommendations · trieve.ai | acquired |
| 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 |
| 2023-06-01 | Search engine for trustworthy medical information. · medisearch.io | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCStardex AI native ATS + CRM for executive search firms · stardex.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | Empowering every doctor and every patient to participate in research · novel.care | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | Powerful quantitative forecasting models · zoaresearch.com | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | YCOmanta A research lab for one · omanta.com | still up |
| 2019-01-01 | Travel planner for researching, organizing, and mapping your trip · wanderlog.com | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCCapuchin Search and automation for engineer-to-order companies · capuchin.ai | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | AI-powered equity research software · hudson-labs.com | still up |
| 2025-09-01 | YCMoss Real-time semantic search for Conversational AI · moss.dev | still up |
| 2023-06-01 | The publishing layer for the agentic internet · structuredlabs.com | gone |
| 2025-01-01 | YCNitrode Frontier AI research to advance game development · nitrode.com | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | YCAnara AI for researchers · anara.com | still up |
| 2022-06-01 | YCPhind AI search engine · phind.com | gone |
| 2021-01-01 | YCTaloflow Better, faster tech vendor research · taloflow.ai | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | 2 sided Marketplace for accelerating medical research · infiuss.com | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | YCFira Financial research platform for investment firms · firaresearch.com | still up |
| 2025-06-01 | YCSerafis Narrative intelligence for investors · serafis.ai | still up |
| 2025-09-01 | YCPerseus Applied Lab focused on Search in Latent Spaces. · perseus.computer | still up |
| 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 |
| 2022-06-01 | A search technology that actually finds what you’re looking for. · search-artemis.com | still up |
| 2022-06-01 | The API to search, scrape, and interact with the web at scale. 🔥 · firecrawl.dev | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCVersive AI-first user research platform · getversive.com | 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.