테크크런치가 AI 폭풍 속에서 사라진 주요 제품과 스타트업들을 정리했다. Zapier 대안이던 Relay가 문을 닫았고, S&P에 따르면 기업 AI 이니셔티브의 약 42%가 결국 중도 폐기된다. 오픈AI의 ChatGPT 리디자인 철회, Sora·Atlas 종료, 애플 Siri 지연, 마이크로소프트 Recall 프라이버시 논란 등 거대 기업도 예외가 아님을 보여준다.
번역된 본문
AI 기반 워크플로 자동화 도구이자 Zapier의 대안으로 만들어진 Relay가 월요일에 완전히 서비스를 종료했다. 이 제품은 AI 에이전트를 활용해 이메일 및 작업 워크플로를 자동화할 수 있게 해주었지만, OpenAI와 구글 등 더 큰 플랫폼들이 유사한 자동화 기능을 자사 도구에 직접 내장하면서, 5년 된 Relay는 독립 제품으로 존재해야 할 이유를 지키기 어려웠다. 더 큰 플랫폼에 밀려난 스타트업인 Relay는 지금 벌어지고 있는 이야기의 한 버전일 뿐이다. 하지만 수많은 AI 베팅은 이를 만든 회사 내부에서조차 살아남지 못한다. S&P 글로벌 마켓 인텔리전스에 따르면 AI 이니셔티브의 약 42%가 결국 모회사에 의해 폐기된다. 그 이유는 다양하다: 자금 부족, 기술적 난제, 경쟁, 확장의 어려움, 혹은 단순히 약한 사용자 수요. 그 결과 'AI 무덤'은 점점 커지고 있다. 아래는 폐쇄되거나, 피벗하거나, 기대에 크게 미치지 못한 가장 주목할 만한 AI 제품, 스타트업, 출시, 베팅들이다. 이것은 실패의 성적표라기보다 이러한 시도들이 업계에 (바라건대) 가르쳐줄 수 있는 교훈의 기록으로 봐야 한다.
오픈AI도 여러 차례 헛발질을 했다. 가장 큰 플레이어라고 해서 예외는 아니다. 세계에서 가장 가치 있는 비상장 기업 중 하나인 OpenAI도 실패와 실수를 겪었다. 비교적 최근의 사례 중 하나는 ChatGPT를 더 포괄적인 '슈퍼 앱'으로 전환하려는 시도였다. 7월 9일 OpenAI는 앱을 업데이트해 'Chat', 'Codex', 'Work' 모드 등 여러 경험을 통합하고 기존의 익숙한 버전은 'ChatGPT Classic'으로 이름을 바꿨다. 이 재설계는 새 인터페이스가 혼란스럽고 복잡하다는 사용자들의 비판을 빠르게 불러일으켰고, OpenAI는 곧 변경을 롤백하고 익숙한 ChatGPT 인터페이스를 되돌렸다. 이것이 OpenAI가 모든 것을 한 곳에 모으려 한 유일한 시도는 아니었다. 회사는 여러 독립 앱을 종료하고 그 기능들을 ChatGPT에 직접 통합했는데, 이 전략은 재설계보다는 나은 결과를 낳았다. 독립형 AI 웹 브라우저였던 ChatGPT Atlas는 1년도 못 가 8월 9일 서비스가 중단되었고, 가장 유용한 기능들은 ChatGPT에 흡수되었다. 회사는 웹을 탐색하고 사용자를 대신해 작업을 수행할 수 있는 AI 에이전트인 Operator에 대해서도 같은 방식을 취했다. 또한 이미지 생성 기능을 ChatGPT에 직접 통합하면서 별도의 이미지 생성 도구였던 DALL-E의 역할은 줄어들었다. 높은 운영 비용과 사용자 유지 문제로 고심하던 동영상 공유 플랫폼 Sora는 2026년 3월에 문을 닫은 것도 잊을 수 없다.
애플의 Siri AI. 애플이 2024년 애플 인텔리전스(Apple Intelligence)를 공개했을 때, 개선된 Siri는 하이라이트 기능 중 하나였다. 맥락을 이해하고, 앱 전반에서 무슨 일이 일어나는지 파악하며, 작업을 효과적으로 수행하는 Siri를 약속했다. 그러나 애플은 엔지니어링 문제와 버그 등 여러 이유를 들어 새로운 Siri 출시를 계속 미뤘다. 이 지연은 결국 아이폰 16의 AI 기능을 마케팅한 방식에 대한 소송으로 2억 5천만 달러 합의로 이어졌다. Siri AI는 드디어 지난 7월 iOS 27 베타에 등장했으며, 새로운 AI 기반 버전은 이번 달 영어권 사용자들에게 먼저 배포되었고, 다른 언어 지원은 그 뒤를 따를 예정이다.
마이크로소프트의 Recall. 2024년 빌드(Build) 개발자 컨퍼런스에서 발표된 마이크로소프트의 Recall 기능은 윈도우 PC를 위한 AI 기반 '사진 같은 기억(포토그래픽 메모리)'으로 홍보되었다. 사용자가 하는 일을 주기적으로 스크린샷으로 찍어 나중에 자신의 디지털 활동 기록을 검색할 수 있게 하는 것이었다. 예상대로 이 발표는 프라이버시와 보안에 대한 즉각적인 반발을 불러일으켰다. 비평가들은 Recall이 비밀번호, 개인 메시지, 금융 정보 등 민감한 정보의 검색 가능한 아카이브를 만들 수 있다고 주장했다. 마이크로소프트는 이 기능을 거의 1년간 연기하며 보안 및 프라이버시 보호를 재고할 시간을 가졌다.
Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down entirely on Monday. The product let users automate email and task workflows using AI agents, but as OpenAI, Google, and other larger platforms built similar automation directly into their own tools, five-year-old Relay struggled to hold on to a reason to exist as a stand-alone product. Relay — a startup outpaced by bigger platforms — is one version of the story playing out right now. But plenty of AI bets never even survive inside the companies that build them. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence , about 42% of AI initiatives are ultimately abandoned by their corporate parents. The reasons vary: insufficient funding, technical challenges, competition, difficulty scaling, or just weak user demand. The result is a growing AI graveyard. Below is a look at some of the most notable AI products, startups, launches, and bets that have shut down, pivoted, or significantly missed expectations. Think of it less as a scorecard of flops than as a record of what these attempts can (hopefully) teach the rest of the industry. OpenAI has taken several stumbles Even the biggest players aren't immune. OpenAI, one of the most valuable private companies in the world, has had its own share of casualties and missteps. One of the more recent examples was its attempt to turn ChatGPT into a broader “ super app .” On July 9, OpenAI updated the app to combine several experiences, including separate "Chat," "Codex," and "Work" modes, while renaming the traditional, familiar version "ChatGPT Classic." The redesign quickly drew criticism from users who found the new interface confusing and cluttered, and OpenAI rolled back the change soon after , bringing the familiar ChatGPT interface back. That wasn't OpenAI's only attempt to pull everything under one roof. The company has also shut down several standalone apps and folded their features directly into ChatGPT — a strategy that's worked out better than the redesign did. ChatGPT Atlas, a standalone AI-powered web browser, lasted less than a year before being discontinued on August 9, with its most useful features absorbed into ChatGPT The company did the same thing with Operator , an AI agent that could browse the web and complete tasks on a user's behalf, and OpenAI has increasingly built image generation directly into ChatGPT, shrinking the role of DALL-E as its own separate destination for creating images. We also can't forget its video-sharing platform, Sora , which struggled with high operating costs and user-retention challenges and shut down in March 2026. Apple’s Siri AI When Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence in 2024, an improved Siri was one of the highlighted features. The pitch promised a Siri that could understand context, know what was happening across apps, and get tasks done effectively. However, Apple repeatedly pushed back the release of the new Siri, citing various reasons like engineering issues and bugs . This delay eventually contributed to a $250 million settlement over claims regarding how Apple marketed the AI capabilities of the iPhone 16. Siri AI finally appeared in the iOS 27 beta this past July, with the new AI-powered version rolling out to English-language users first this month; support for other languages is expected to follow. Microsoft’s Recall Announced at its 2024 Build developer conference, Microsoft’s Recall feature was pitched as an AI-powered "photographic memory" for Windows PCs, periodically taking screenshots of what a user was doing so they could later search back through their own digital history. Predictably, the announcement triggered an immediate backlash over privacy and security. Critics argued that Recall could create a searchable archive of highly sensitive information, including passwords, private messages, financial details, and other activity. Microsoft delayed the feature for nearly a year, giving the company time to rethink its security and privacy protections. Even after a redesign, the controversy hasn't gone away. A cybersecurity researcher recently built a tool that could extract and display data that Recall had captured, reviving questions about whether Microsoft has actually fixed the underlying problem. Notion Mail Notion Mail launched in April 2025 as an AI-focused email product designed to help users organize and automate their inboxes. However, the company noticed its users were using separate AI agents to handle their email inboxes instead. As a result, Notion Mail is scheduled to shut down on September 22 . Humane AI Pin The Humane AI Pin is probably one of the most well-known failures in AI hardware. Designed to provide AI features through a wearable device rather than a traditional smartphone, Humane raised $230 million from investors and garnered significant attention. But the product struggled mightily with performance, and the situation worsened when Humane warned customers to stop using its charging case because of a potential battery fire risk. Humane then shut down its AI Pin business in February 2025, with most of the company’s assets acquired by HP for $116 million. Rabbit R1 The Rabbit R1 was another heavily hyped AI device. Unveiled at CES in January 2024, the AI companion was designed to perform tasks on behalf of its owner. Rabbit said it had sold 100,000 units shortly after launch. However, strong initial sales didn’t mean it was a strong product. Early reviews described the device as unfinished, with unreliable performance and a limited number of useful integrations. The company hasn’t given up, though. It has continued updating the R1, positioning it as a computer controller capable of performing agentic tasks. It also recently announced a new hardware project, dubbed “Project Cyberdeck,” aimed at creating a portable device built for vibe-coding. Huxe Huxe was an AI audio app, built by former developers of Google's NotebookLM, that turned written information into conversational, podcast-style audio. The company shut down in May 2026, partly as larger platforms began offering similar experiences to large existing audiences. For instance, Spotify has been expanding its own AI-powered audio tools. Yupp Yupp was an interesting AI product: a free playground that allowed users to compare responses from hundreds of AI models side by side. Users could also vote on responses and earn cryptocurrency through the platform. At its peak, the platform let users test more than 800 models, including from companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. But according to its founders, Yupp never achieved strong enough product-market fit to survive. The platform shut down in March 2026. Figgs AI Figgs AI operated from 2023 to 2024, letting users create and interact with customizable AI characters for roleplay and storytelling. The platform reportedly drew more than 1 million users, but its developers said keeping the service free became too expensive to sustain, and they shut it down . Topics AI , evergreens , Microsoft , OpenAI , siri ai When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Lauren Forristal Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch. You can contact or verify outreach from Lauren by emailing laurenf.techcrunch@gmail.com or via encrypted message at laurenforris22.25 on Signal. View Bio October 13 - 15 San Francisco Last day to book an exhibit table is September 18. 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