AI Tool Failure Rate Statistics (2026): 9.5% of 2,718 Tracked Tools | ToolDirectory.AI
ToolDirectory.AI · ResearchLive · Updated August 12, 2026
Original research · The AI Graveyard<br>How many AI tools quietly die?<br>We have catalogued 2,718 AI tools. 258 have since shut down or been acquired — a hand-reviewed measure of how fast this landscape turns over.<br>✦ Measured, not estimated<br>2,718<br>Tools tracked
258<br>Retired & buried
9.5%<br>Mortality rate
Key findings<br>Cite these<br>01Of the 2,718 AI tools ToolDirectory.AI has tracked, 258 (9.5%) have shut down or been acquired.
02125 tools shut down outright; 133 were acquired.
032025 was the deadliest year on record, with 101 retirements.
0454.1% of acquired AI tools kept shipping under their own brand; the rest were folded in and sunset.
0596 distinct companies have acquired at least one tracked AI tool.
06The category with the most retirements is Developer Tools (34 dead tools).
07The highest failure rate is in Automotive: 16.1% of tracked tools (5/31) have died.
By the numbers<br>As of August 12, 2026<br>2,718<br>Tools tracked<br>Active catalog + Graveyard
258<br>Retired<br>Shut down or acquired
9.5%<br>Mortality rate<br>Share of all tracked tools
125<br>Hard shutdowns<br>Product offline, team gone
133<br>Acquired<br>54.1% kept shipping
2,460<br>Still active<br>Live in the catalog today
Retirements by year<br>deceasedAt<br>2025 was the deadliest year on record. Counts reflect the year each tool actually wound down — recent years lag, because failures surface months after the fact.<br>'18<br>'19<br>'20<br>'21<br>'22<br>22<br>'23<br>51<br>'24<br>101<br>'25<br>68<br>'26
How they died<br>By cause<br>Shut down34.9% · 65
Acquired and sunset32.8% · 61
Domain lapsed28.5% · 53
Abandoned3.8% · 7
Who is buying<br>Consolidation · 96 acquirers<br>01NVIDIA
8 tools<br>02OpenAI
7 tools<br>03Salesforce
4 tools<br>04Cursor (Anysphere)
3 tools<br>05Google
3 tools<br>06Meta
3 tools<br>07Adobe
2 tools<br>08Amazon
2 tools<br>09Calabrio
2 tools<br>10Cognition
2 tools
The Graveyard<br>Where tools go to die<br>Absolute retirements per category. Larger categories naturally bury more.
R · I · P<br>34<br>Developer Tools<br>buried
R · I · P<br>27<br>AI Infrastructure<br>buried
R · I · P<br>21<br>AI Agents<br>buried
R · I · P<br>20<br>Customer Support<br>buried
R · I · P<br>19<br>AI Art & Image Creation<br>buried
R · I · P<br>18<br>AI Content Writing<br>buried
R · I · P<br>18<br>Marketing & SEO<br>buried
R · I · P<br>16<br>Productivity<br>buried
Which categories fail most<br>Failure rate<br>Share of every tool tracked in a category that has since died. Categories with fewer than 12 tracked tools are excluded so the rate is not noise.<br>Automotive<br>5 / 31
16.1%
E-Commerce<br>6 / 48
12.5%
NSFW<br>4 / 33
12.1%
Coding Assistants<br>4 / 42
9.5%
BI & Analytics<br>12 / 127
9.4%
AI Content Writing<br>15 / 172
8.7%
Customer Support<br>12 / 138
8.7%
Developer Tools<br>27 / 320
8.4%
Cite this report · Open data<br>“Commonly cited AI startup failure figures run 80–90% — but they're estimates. Ours is measured at the product level: 9.5%, hand-verified, and updated as the Graveyard grows.”<br>ToolDirectory.AI, "The State of AI Tool Mortality," August 12, 2026. https://tooldirectory.ai/research/ai-tool-mortalityThis report and its underlying dataset are free to cite and reuse under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to ToolDirectory.AI.<br>Dataset (JSON) →Report (Markdown) →Browse the Graveyard →
Methodology · How we count<br>Every entry in the Graveyard is read, sourced, and dated by an editor before it lands — we do not auto-scrape, and we do not mark a tool dead just because its domain stops resolving. “Retired” means a hard shutdown or an acquisition; acquired tools that kept shipping under their own brand are tracked separately and are not counted as deaths in the cause and category breakdowns where noted.<br>The mortality rate is the Graveyard count divided by every tool we have ever tracked (active catalog plus Graveyard). It is a floor, not a ceiling: tools we never catalogued and tools that have died but we have not yet confirmed are not included. Numbers regenerate automatically as the registry grows.
Questions · FAQ<br>How many AI tools have shut down?<br>ToolDirectory.AI has tracked 2,718 AI tools; 258 (9.5%) have since shut down or been acquired. Of those, 125 were hard shutdowns and 133 were acquisitions.
What is the AI tool failure rate?<br>Across every tool we have catalogued, the measured failure rate is 9.5% as of August 12, 2026. This counts both outright shutdowns and acquisitions where the original brand was retired.
What is the AI startup failure rate?<br>Commonly cited AI startup failure figures run from 80% to 90%, but they are estimates. Our number is measured at the product level: 9.5% of the 2,718 AI tools we have tracked have already shut down or been acquired — a live, hand-verified floor for the real rate, updated as the Graveyard grows. Landscape-level survivorship over a longer window will read higher.
What kills most AI tools — shutdown or acquisition?<br>The most common recorded cause is "Shut down" at 34.9% of retirements with a known cause.
Do acquired AI tools survive?<br>54.1% of...