# Is the AI Bubble Bursting?

> Original research by ToolDirectory.AI. As of 2026-08-15. Source: https://tooldirectory.ai/research/is-the-ai-bubble-bursting. License: CC BY 4.0.

Measured at the product level inside a fixed catalogue: 270 of the 2727 AI tools ToolDirectory.AI tracks have shut down or been acquired — a 9.9% failure rate. This is not the 80-90% figure usually quoted in AI bubble coverage, because that figure is a company-level estimate across the startup population and this is a census of real products.

## Headline numbers

- Tools tracked: 2727
- Retired (shut down or acquired): 270
- Product-level failure rate: 9.9%
- Acquisitions still shipping under their own brand: 82 of 143 (57.3%)
- Peak year for retirements: 2025 (104 tools)

## Is it accelerating? (like-for-like window)

| Window | 2025 | 2026 | Change |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| January 1 to August 15 | 64 | 73 | +14.1% |

2026 is incomplete, so it is never compared against a finished year — that would manufacture a collapse out of the calendar, and annualising it would manufacture a forecast. Both sides of this comparison cover the identical span (January 1 to August 15), so both have had the same amount of time to accumulate. Moves inside 15% are treated as flat: the window is a few dozen retirements wide, so a handful of late-logged audit rows can swing it by that much.

## Retirements by year

| Year | Retirements | Shut down | Acquired, brand retired | Acquired, still shipping |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 2018 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 2021 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| 2022 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 2023 | 22 | 9 | 5 | 8 |
| 2024 | 53 | 21 | 16 | 16 |
| 2025 | 104 | 52 | 26 | 26 |
| 2026 (YTD) | 73 | 40 | 8 | 25 |

"Retirement" means the tool left the active catalogue. An acquisition where the product kept shipping under its own name is listed here but is NOT a death — separating the two is the difference between measuring a collapse and measuring consolidation. The 2026 row covers January 1 to August 15 only.

## Year-over-year multiples (complete years only)

- 2018 to 2019: 0.5x
- 2019 to 2020: 4x
- 2020 to 2021: 1.3x
- 2021 to 2022: 1x
- 2022 to 2023: 4.4x
- 2023 to 2024: 2.4x
- 2024 to 2025: 2x

The incomplete current year is excluded from these multiples on purpose; see the like-for-like window above for the current direction of travel.

## Methodology

Every tool in the catalogue is checked by an editor as active, shut down, or acquired, and every retirement is sourced and dated by hand rather than auto-scraped. Both halves of every rate here come from the same catalogue, so each rate is internally valid regardless of how complete our coverage is — but it describes the tools ToolDirectory.AI tracks, not the AI market as a whole. Absolute counts are always stated alongside their denominator for that reason. Full machine-readable dataset: https://tooldirectory.ai/feed/graveyard.json