--- title: "We checked 11,709 AI launches on Hacker News. Here's how fast they're dying." description: "30x more AI launches every day, but 4x as likely to be dead within 18 months." canonical: "https://spark.site/blog/ai-startup-failure-rate" --- Research # We checked 11,709 AI launches on Hacker News. Here's how fast they're dying. 30x more AI launches every day, but 4x as likely to be dead within 18 months. ![](https://spark.site/images/authors/dan-li.jpg) Daniel Li October 30, 2026 ![42% of AI products launched on Hacker News in 2025 were dead within 18 months. Below, the share still online by months after launch for 2022 to 2025 launches; each newer year falls faster, with 2025 highlighted.](https://spark.site/images/blog/ai-startup-failure-rate/cover.png) We collected every [Show HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/show) post about an AI product from 2022 through 2025 (11,709 products), and checked whether each one’s website is still up. About half are dead, and while more AI products are being launched than ever before, the newer ones are dying younger. ## More launches than ever ![Bar chart of the average number of Show HN posts about AI products per day: 2 a day in 2022, 12 in 2023, 14 in 2024, 29 in 2025 and 59 so far in 2026.](https://spark.site/images/blog/ai-startup-failure-rate/launches.png) In 2022, people posted ~2 AI products a day to Show HN. So far in 2026 it’s nearly 60 a day. The steepest rise came in early 2026. February 2026 alone had 3,044 AI launches, four times as many as all of 2022. App stores show the same surge. [TechCrunch reported](https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/18/the-app-store-is-booming-again-and-ai-may-be-why/) 60% more new apps on the App Store and Google Play in the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier. ## Each year’s launches die sooner ![Line chart of the percent of AI products launched on Hacker News still online by month after launch, one line per launch year from 2022 to 2025. Each year's line falls faster than the one before.](https://spark.site/images/blog/ai-startup-failure-rate/survival-cohorts.png) However, products are also dying a lot faster. AI products launched in 2025 were 4.2x more likely to be dead within 18 months compared to 2022 (42% vs. 10%). The typical lifespan has shrunk with each class. Half of the 2022 launches lasted about 54 months. For 2023 it was 43 months, and for 2024, 31. The 2025 class hasn’t reached its halfway point yet, but it’s falling faster than any year before it. The two trends are connected. When it only takes a weekend to launch a new product, it’s also very easy to walk away from it. ## Y Combinator startups show the same trend Hacker News launches include a lot of side projects. So we ran the same check on the 1,280 AI startups in Y Combinator’s company directory, which are more likely to have funding and full-time founders. ![Two bar charts of the share of AI products gone within 18 months of launch, by launch year. Hacker News launches: 10% in 2022, 14% in 2023, 23% in 2024, 42% in 2025. Y Combinator AI startups: 0%, 1%, 3% and 6%.](https://spark.site/images/blog/ai-startup-failure-rate/hn-vs-yc.png) YC companies die far less often. 85% were still running four years after their batch. However, the trend is the same. In the 2022 batch, every company was still alive at 18 months. For the 2025 batch, 6% of the companies are already gone after 18 months. ## Attention at launch helps, a little ![Bar chart of the share of AI products launched on Hacker News in 2023 and 2024 that are no longer online, by points on the launch post: under 10 points 51% dead (4,361 products), 10 to 99 points 41% (591), 100 or more points 27% (132).](https://spark.site/images/blog/ai-startup-failure-rate/attention.png) Launches that got 100 or more points on Hacker News were about half as likely to be dead as launches that got under 10. Even so, more than a quarter of those well-received launches are gone. Interestingly, the kind of product didn’t make much of a difference. Chatbots, writing tools, coding tools and image generators launched in 2023 and 2024 all landed between 45% and 57% dead. So go and support your fellow builders and founders by upvoting new ShowHN posts! :) ## How we did this **The products.** We collected every Show HN post from 2022 through 2025 from the Hacker News search API and kept the ones whose title or text mentions AI, a model name or common AI product terms. This resulted in 11,709 products. For comparison, we took the 1,280 companies tagged AI in Y Combinator’s company directory from the 2022 to 2025 batches. **Launch counts.** The launches chart counts every Show HN post from 2022 through October 2026 that match the same AI terms. **Alive or dead.** In October 2026 we used AI to review every site. A product counts as dead if its domain no longer resolves, its server doesn’t respond, it shows an error page, a parked or for-sale page, a blank placeholder, or a shutdown notice. A product that redirects to an acquirer counts as acquired, and is left out of the dead count. About 6% of sites couldn’t be checked (mostly bot walls) and are left out too. **When they died.** A site needs a security certificate to serve HTTPS, and certificates are logged publicly and renewed every few months. We used the last certificate issued for each dead site’s domain as the date it was last running. Where no date was available, we estimated one from the dates of other products launched the same year. The curves use a standard survival estimate (Kaplan–Meier), so products launched recently still count for the months they’ve been around. **When sites go dark.** Of the 1,654 dead products whose domain expired and whose last-online date we could measure, 39% went dark around the one-year mark and 12% around two years. Those are when domains come up for renewal. This only tells you when the site went offline, so the product may have stopped working long before. ## More from the blog - [ ![‘The best Replit alternatives, tested.’ beside the workshop apps that Spark, ChatGPT Sites, Base44, Lovable, FlutterFlow, Adalo, and Glide built in the test, with the Spark logo.](https://spark.site/images/blog/replit-alternatives/cover.jpg) Comparisons ### Best Replit Alternatives for Non-Technical Founders: 7 Tools Tested Best Replit alternatives for non-technical founders, tested. Compare Lovable, Base44, Spark, Adalo, and more on ease of use, editing, and price. 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