Startup Failures in USA

A co-founder of Google's ex-wife put your DNA in a database. Then she lost the company.

EV startup that burned $900M without shipping a production car

Former Apple designers raised $230M for a screenless AI pin — then got the worst reviews in tech history

Silent mobile power generators for film sets and construction. Chapter 11 before the sequel.

Viral shooter fame couldn't sustain a $1.5B valuation built on a single game.

Paying $800M for Harvard's edX legacy became a billion-dollar debt trap.

The employer health navigation IPO that spent four years proving the model didn't work at scale

The AI browser automation startup raised 415M dollars from Microsoft and Google and was effectively acqui-hired by Amazon in June 2024.

Went public at $1.88B, sold everything to Continental for $3.9M — a 99.8% loss in three years.

Developer darling of internal tools, acqui-hired by Airtable after $32M spent.

Enterprise AI helpdesk that got crushed by Microsoft's bundling strategy.

Harvard's quantum networking spinout died waiting for a market that won't exist until 2030.

The Everything Store couldn't get Americans to watch shopping TV on their laptops.

From $7B direct listing darling to 90% market cap wipeout

The 'YouTube for podcasts' became just another Spotify tab.

Spotify bought the podcast social layer then killed it to cut costs.

Supply chain marketplace that Tiger Global backed at peak panic and sold at discount in calm.

The AI blood test startup that couldn't get FDA clearance and pivoted to a crowded RCM market

The electric truck startup that tried to IPO on crowdfunding

Promised AI-perfect forecasts for everyone else's revenue — couldn't forecast its own survival.

Base editing pioneer from the Broad Institute — stock fell 90% as biotech multiples compressed

Digital mortgage raised $1B+, processed $25B in COVID-era refinancing, hired 10,000 employees — then 2022 mortgage rates hit 7%, refinancing collapsed 80%, 9,000 employees were fired, SPAC valued at $7.7B went public at $5/share

The gene therapy pioneer that spent 14 years and 4B dollars developing cures for rare diseases and became a zombie when payers refused to cover the 2.8M dollar price tag.

The supersonic revival that couldn't find an engine — or the economics to justify one.

An AI appraisal platform whose revenue model was held hostage by the CRE transaction drought.

The health insurance startup that raised $2.4B, IPO'd at $18, then filed for bankruptcy after losing billions on medical claims

A depression telehealth startup crushed by $400 customer acquisition costs and insurance gaps.

Polish CI/CD underdog ran out of runway when GitHub Actions made pipelines free for millions.

Restaurant GPO marketplace crushed by its own $180M LBO debt as rates rose.

Kushner's real estate tech platform sold for pennies as CRE market imploded

Isabelle Kenyon raised $123M to build a doctor-supervised GLP-1 + coaching metabolic health platform. $800/month drug costs consumed subscription margins. Shut all patient operations March 2024.

Science-based carbon advisory met the brutal reality of clients canceling sustainability budgets.

AI for seniors met the harsh reality of slow hospital sales and expensive hardware

The $8.5B cap table management platform that lost enterprise clients after a data misuse scandal revealed a rep had used client equity data to solicit competing investors

The Alzheimer's drug that hit $4B on manipulated data — SEC consent order, CEO resignation, open investigation

ZoomInfo's $575M acquisition became a slow-motion product sunset

Digital twin startup for cities couldn't compete with GIS giants and ran out of cash.

Zero fees sound great until you discover workers won't switch their direct deposit for you.

The $2.6B revenue platform that couldn't forecast its own revenue collapse.

The computer vision pioneer that hyperscalers commoditized — when cloud giants bundle vision APIs for free, the market disappears.

500K users in 60 days, zero sustainable revenue, dead in 15 months.

Compensation benchmarking SaaS hit a wall when Big Tech stopped hiring entirely.

Built for the remote-work boom, buried by the RTO wave.

GM's $15B robotaxi bet — ended by one car dragging one pedestrian 20 feet

The $5.7B SPAC neo-bank that became a 97% stock collapse cautionary tale.

3D printing for the factory floor. The factory floor wasn't buying.

The web knowledge graph AI — LLMs made its core value proposition available for free.

The BI unicorn that spent $800M to build a category already owned by Tableau and Salesforce.

The virtual watercooler that dried up when budgets tightened.

LiDAR robots caught every construction defect except the one in the business model.

The conversational marketing pioneer raised $107M at $1B and was acquired for a fraction in a Salesloft fire sale

Uber paid $1.1B for on-demand alcohol delivery in 2021. Shut it down in 2024 because Uber Eats already did the same thing.

Ocean carbon removal startup that sank under regulatory and market headwinds.

AI unicorn in talent intelligence that couldn't demonstrate enough ROI to justify unicorn pricing.

A $380M green hydrogen bet ended when institutional capital fled the sector entirely.

The company behind Moxie, the AI social robot for children with autism, shut down leaving 10,000 families with bricked devices.

Two cloud lab companies merged to survive, then spent five more years slowly proving robots can't beat bench scientists on cost.

Zinc battery storage for the grid. SPAC at $375M. Sixteen years in and still losing money.

The Tesla killer backed by a fugitive billionaire — a decade of promises and almost no cars.

A $3.9B farm data unicorn that couldn't translate farmer trust into sustainable economics.

The world's most famous gaming brand went from $725M SPAC valuation to $17M fire sale in 24 months.

The Ocean SUV launched into a sea of defects and dealer disputes

Splitting rent with borrowed money works until interest rates double your cost of capital.

The Airbnb of warehousing ran out of runway when inventory cycles turned.

Flood insurance data that didn't work during the actual flood.

Bitcoin rewards card that proved crypto enthusiasm doesn't survive a bear market.

Won Salesforce's AI prize, then lost to Zendesk's native features.

Processed a billion applications but couldn't scale a billion-dollar business sustainably.

Chicago's upscale corner store for millennials. It closed all 33 locations on the same Tuesday morning with no warning.

The customer success category creator that couldn't create enough exit value

A Discord rival that built half a million communities but couldn't charge any of them.

The autonomous driving startup that raised $220M targeting highway self-driving — shut down in April 2024 after failing to find an acquirer as the AV industry consolidated around Waymo and Tesla

The biological platform company that would program cells like software. The cells didn't scale like software.

GM's $10B robotaxi bet collapsed after a dragging incident and a cover-up destroyed trust.

Bill Gates-backed produce freshness startup wilted when food supply chains stabilized.

Bill Gross's AI-powered solar furnace. It hit $2B in hype. Then it wound down operations.

Automotive-focused ATS collapsed when rising rates crushed car dealership hiring budgets.

MIT's tabular AI star couldn't outforecast SAP in the enterprise — sold to Scale AI for a fraction of its value.

Restaurant loyalty SaaS swallowed whole by POS giants giving it away for free.

Microsoft paid $650M for the AI team — then the company they left kept the money

Insuring Uber drivers sounded like a goldmine until the loss ratios hit 110%.

The design platform that Figma made obsolete

The studio behind Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery and Cookie Jam filed Chapter 11 in 2024 — $480M in claims, 900 employees, and a lesson in debt-financed mobile gaming

A $280M blood disorder biotech crushed by a competitor already approved and dominant.

Built edge AI chips for China's boom market — then US export rules killed the dream.

Fractional rental shares for $5 — until the platform froze withdrawals like a crypto exchange.

One failed trial erased $200M and a decade of Friedreich's Ataxia hope.

The HR platform that tried to put AI workers on its own performance management system

The AI insurer that discovered that even robot underwriters can't escape actuarial math.

A photonic AI chip startup discovered optical computing still can't beat Nvidia on price-performance.

Overstated lithium recovery rates by 33 points — Argonne's tests killed the Series B.

Maersk's freight bet shrank from 800 to 200 employees as the market refused to recover.

The teen prodigy's lidar company — from $8B SPAC to near-zero in three years

Rick Klausner's star-studded cell therapy company raised $800M, IPO'd at $25, now trades at $1

Built the best test prep tool for tests universities decided to stop requiring.

Built the perfect TCFD compliance tool for regulations that kept shrinking or not arriving.

'Roblox for adults' raised $100M and never found its audience.

The open-source Slack alternative — caught between Microsoft Teams free and Slack's mindshare.

May Mobility's autonomous shuttles averaged 5 riders a day — not even close to commercial viability.

The Apple Store of cannabis burned through $500M and filed bankruptcy

A $1.7B parking tech bet drowning under acquisition debt and slower-than-promised AI rollout.

The privacy social network that became a refugee camp for banned communities — not a mainstream alternative.

The luxury fashion e-commerce pioneer that invented the trunk show pre-order model raised 345M dollars and filed Chapter 11 in June 2024.

A small indie publisher absorbed by a struggling parent couldn't survive 2024's gaming downturn.

A beloved MMORPG franchise couldn't survive being grafted onto a blockchain nobody wanted.

Hydrogen trucks that existed only on slides

Autonomous fulfillment robotics that ran out of runway before the market arrived.

API security unicorn sold to Akamai for half its peak valuation after CISO budgets froze.

Hit #1 on App Store, lost 80% of users within 90 days.

Tried to bring Chinese live commerce to sneakerheads. American screens didn't convert.

iBuying pioneer raised $1.9B and went public at $18B SPAC valuation — 2022 mortgage rates hit 7%, lost $1.4B in Q3 2022 alone on inventory purchased at 2021 prices, $18B valuation collapsed to $700M by 2023

Hyperspectral satellites in orbit, but the paying customers never arrived.

The activewear brand Mickey Drexler backed with his personal reputation — destroyed by founder Tyler Haney's internal turmoil, a damning Business Insider expose, and a bankruptcy sale for $3 million

Brilliant satellite tech, wrong underlying asset: when the forest credits burned, so did Pachama.

Personalized cancer T-cells at $500K each — the math never worked.

A $1.4B companionship unicorn that burned bright and collapsed when Medicare scrutinized social care billing.

No-code data pipelines for non-engineers, disrupted by AI before reaching scale.

Penn Medicine gene therapy spin-out — IPO at $18, fell to $0.50 after trial failures

a16z-backed, celebrity-endorsed, Lucy Guo-led. Still couldn't find product-market fit in creator tools.

The carbon API startup that API'd its way into a market that no longer existed.

Facebook and Salesforce backed this community college upskilling play — then quietly walked away.

Fee-free B2B payments promised blockchain disruption but burned cash before breaking even.

Captured $100M in funding and the activity data of the Fortune 500 — then Salesforce captured the market.

Climate scenario modeling for mandates that courts and politics refused to mandate.

Built on a tax loophole — one policy change erased the entire business model.

ArenaNet's founder shut down 70 employees in one day with zero severance.

Economic signal forecasting killed by the most economically unpredictable era in decades.

Government NLP platform ran into a budget freeze and Palantir's legal army simultaneously.

Math class in VR — but schools couldn't afford the hardware refresh cycle.

The $665M photonic quantum bet that restructured as timelines stretched to 2030+.

90% reimbursement sounded generous until veterinary inflation made it a death sentence.

Great product, wrong market ceiling — couldn't climb to enterprise-scale contracts.

A quantum software darling backed by Goldman and Airbus that quietly gave up on quantum.

A Gen Z therapy alternative that raised $18M then shut down declaring the mental health app market 'broken'.

AI sales copy tool killed when every CRM added a free AI writer.

The internet video pioneer that built 20 years of fandom and was shut down by Warner Bros in 5 minutes

Oracle and SAP built their sanctions tool natively — and took 60% of the client base in one product cycle.

Free tutoring for all is noble until the philanthropists' priorities change.

B2B BNPL for inventory purchases collapsed when e-commerce brands stopped paying back.

The digital health platform that went public via SPAC at $3.9B and was delisted after a 98% stock collapse

Tally counted every item on every shelf except the months of runway it had left.

The mobile esports SPAC unicorn — discovered that real-money gaming has regulatory and CAC problems that don't scale.

The knowledge wiki that got caught between a $10B Notion and a resurgent Confluence.

PO collaboration marketplace squeezed out by SAP Ariba and enterprise procurement suites.

Precision mental health for employers raised $450M — then the employer benefits freeze hit the same category that made Lyra cut 30%

The enterprise CXM unicorn that IPO'd at $7.7B and compressed 75% as multiples normalized.

A $1.3B warehouse unicorn discovered that owning physical assets kills software-company multiples.

Sold tomorrow's regulatory mandate today—but tomorrow never came.

Claimed AI beats McKinsey — clients gave it an NPS of 4.

Trained Walmart's 1M workers in VR — then couldn't find a buyer.

Built the rails for a metaverse train that never left the station.

Community esports became in-game ads became metaverse hype; the stock fell 99%.

Even $100M couldn't make the embedded insurance math add up at Sure.

The grocery retail media darling squeezed out by the giants it was built to serve around.

Even a $83M war chest couldn't outlast corporate indifference to pay equity.

Built the rails for live commerce in America — then the trains stopped coming.

Raised $3.4B to buy Amazon FBA brands. Became the fastest company to reach $1B valuation. Filed Chapter 11 in 2024 when the roll-up math stopped working.

The TikTok killer backed by rappers — revenue claimed $100M, auditors found $600K

MIT-born factory floor no-code platform ran out of runway when industrial spending froze.

Elon paid $44B for Twitter — analysts value X at $12B

Unity retroactively changed pricing on 3 million developers — and lost its CEO

FDA-approved cultivated chicken that cost more to make than the rarest Wagyu.

Climate-forward urban planning tool shut down as government tech budgets evaporated.

Airbnb for people who hate Airbnb's service quality. 17,000 employees later, Chapter 11.

Oracle released a free version of VaultShift's entire business.

Gig delivery math never worked — $170M couldn't fix the unit economics.

OpenAI gave Viable's enterprise customers the tools to fire them.

$305M and a novel AML concept, but modest Phase 1 responses made the pivotal trial unaffordable.

AI meeting tool killed the day Zoom made its AI features free for all users.

Online used car marketplace IPO'd at $2.5B in 2020. Shut down e-commerce operations in January 2024 after $800M+ in losses.

Methane-eating microbes for farms: scientifically sound, commercially impossible to sell.

Discount marketplace IPO'd at $14B then sold for $173M three years later

Amazon for the price-sensitive: $1 items shipped free, no questions asked

Opioid addiction telehealth champion undone by Medicaid reimbursement cuts and unsustainable costs.

The celebrity AI startup with a $24B valuation — still searching for the product differentiation that justifies it.

The carbon NASDAQ that watched its entire asset class evaporate in 18 months.

Yik Yak relaunched in 2021 with new funding and moderation — the same anonymous local social harassment problems returned and the product shut again in 2023

Design-to-developer handoff tool erased by Figma Dev Mode

The online degree company that paid $800M for edX then filed for bankruptcy two years later

Bought for $450M, sold for $13M: Shopify's warehouse robot became the most expensive pivot in logistics history.

Adobe paid $1B to NOT buy Figma — the most expensive failed acquisition in tech history

The vertical farming pioneer that turned a 70,000 sq ft Newark steel mill into the world's largest indoor farm — and proved the model couldn't pay its electricity bill

The wedding pro's favorite SaaS tool couldn't survive when its users' businesses died.

The creator of the first FDA-authorised prescription video game for ADHD — went public at $1B+ via SPAC, then sold to Virtual Therapeutics for $34M a year later

The AWS of Web3 — raised at $10.2B then laid off as the Web3 developer market contracted

The sustainable shoe unicorn that lost 97% of its market cap to cheaper, faster, trendier rivals

The remote-work document collaboration startup raised $9M then shut down as Notion won the category

a16z-backed tech-enabled pharmacy raised $354M to deliver prescriptions with pharmacist support. Eight years. Could not overcome PBM reimbursement rates and delivery economics. Shut October 2023.

EV battery swapping startup raised $160M from Shell and Repsol—then shut down operations in August 2023 as automakers standardised on fast charging over battery swap.

The African tech talent unicorn raised $381M at $1.5B and then AI coding tools commoditized the engineers it trained

Standalone API monitoring company made irrelevant as observability giants bundled its product for free.

The AI-powered indoor farm that promised to feed Appalachia and filed bankruptcy instead

Behavioral health integrator that couldn't bridge the gap between therapist costs and insurance rates.

Built a crypto gambling platform and was surprised when regulators called it gambling.

The small satellite rocket that exploded on live TV and still raised $500M

8,000 landlords, zero willingness to pay enough to survive.

SaaS for senior living couldn't dislodge legacy EHR giants in the enterprise segment

Eight years building enterprise voice AI, made obsolete by ChatGPT in six months.

Fintech lending darling raised $600M to serve middle-market credit — then learned that middle-market credit is hard for good reasons

AI turned browser automation from a no-code superpower into an obsolete workaround in 12 months.

SPAC'd at $1.6B, traded down 94% as pandemic pet adoption proved a one-time spike.

Subscription dog toys that SPAC'd into oblivion on Wall Street.

BCG built 100 startups for clients but couldn't prove any of them would survive without subsidy.

Emotion AI for call centers killed by its own bias findings and incoming EU regulation.

A crowdfunded adventure lifestyle box couldn't outlast soaring Facebook ad costs.

The therapy app that secretly shared users' mental health data with Facebook and Snapchat for ad targeting

IPO'd at $14B on plant-based meat revolution — now worth $400M as Americans choose real beef

Fastest startup to unicorn status in history (3 months). Also one of the fastest to prove scooter unit economics don't work.

$2.5B for scooters with a 28-day street lifespan.

Bird burned $700M+ discovering that losing $1.38 per ride doesn't scale into a business.

The original e-scooter unicorn raised $776M and went public via SPAC at $2.3B—then filed for Chapter 11 in December 2023 having burned through nearly all of it.

One of crypto's earliest US exchanges, outlasted rivals only to be killed by compliance costs

Swing analytics hardware that couldn't keep pace with software-only sports tracking alternatives.

One-click checkout for the open web. The CEO who said checkout could be bigger than Amazon. Then the board sued him.

Walmart bought the DTC menswear pioneer for $310M in 2017 — and sold it for $75M in 2023

Bet the whole metaverse on NFTs and lost everything when crypto winter hit.

The indoor vertical farming startup that raised $472 million from Goldman Sachs, CPPIB, and Google — then shut down overnight in March 2023 when a new funding round could not be closed

The millennial Costco raised $500M and filed bankruptcy the same year it went public

The asynchronous telehealth platform raised $30M and was shut down when Teladoc and Amazon Clinic made async care free

Financial wellness coaching died when CFOs cut benefits budgets.

Digitized construction bidding just as rate hikes froze the job site.

Roommate-matching tech that couldn't solve the oldest problem in real estate: maintenance costs.

Digital media's biggest SPAC at $1.5B. BuzzFeed News shut 18 months later. Stock down 95%.

The enterprise AI platform that couldn't prove its own ROI

The live streaming platform that couldn't brew an audience

Raised $262M trying to out-Twitch Twitch. Viewers never came.

The live podcast platform haunted by tragedy and buried by a dead market category.

A pandemic unicorn that discovered celebrity shoutouts were a fad, not a market.

NYC pharmacy delivery startup raised $300M from L Catterton—then shut down operations in March 2023 after failing to expand its tech-first pharmacy model beyond its home city.

The $1.2 billion digital pharmacy startup that promised same-day prescription delivery — and shut down overnight in March 2023 when SoftBank-era economics met pharmacy margins

GPT-4's legal breakthrough sold itself to the Westlaw empire for $650 million.

The $1.4B healthcare transparency IPO that proved benefits platforms are worth a fraction of what Wall Street paid for them

Treating only 28 patients before funds ran dry — a cell therapy too small to survive biotech winter.

Blockchain was the product. Crypto's collapse made it the liability.

Restaurant supply marketplace that pivoted to groceries and ran out of runway.

The homework help unicorn IPO'd at $7B and lost 80% of its value the day ChatGPT made its core product obsolete

Cross-border payments for Africa at $2.2B. FTX invested. SVB collapsed. The valuation did too.

The Alphabet-backed Medicaid startup that discovered VC timelines are incompatible with healthcare economics

A $5.7B Medicaid care startup that lost $150M+ trying to serve the patients no one else wanted.

AI claims automation hit a wall when the AI was wrong 14% of the time.

The B2B data enrichment platform that was once the independent standard for lead intelligence — acquired by HubSpot as the market commoditized

Auto insurtech raised $400M then shut down — cheaper premiums don't work when claims costs keep rising

Raised $52M to voice-enable banking, collapsed under lawsuits and enterprise sales cycles.

$4B for live audio. Then the pandemic ended and Big Tech copied it.

On-demand storage raised $300M but couldn't crack last-mile economics

Kubernetes CI/CD pioneer swallowed by Datadog as free alternatives killed its market.

Forty million dollars and a decade building enterprise AI governance that never found its market.

The tech-forward employer health benefits platform raised $280M at $1.5B and spent a decade not quite finding unit economics

Co-living's biggest US brand discovered that scale without profitability is just expensive furniture.

Invented 'community-led growth' as a category, then couldn't survive the SaaS downturn.

The $6.4B tech-powered real estate brokerage that discovered technology does not change commission economics

The streetwear media brand sold for $300M in 2021 and resold at a massive loss two years later

ChatGPT made a 12-year freelance content marketplace obsolete in under 12 months.

Post-pandemic parcel volumes killed the last-mile visibility dream.

The digital freight brokerage that raised $930M to disrupt trucking — shut down when the post-COVID freight market collapsed overnight

Shopify and Amazon adding free AI copy killed Copysmith's only distribution channel.

The Stanford MOOC pioneer IPO'd at $4.3B in 2021 and fell 80% as lifetime learning economics proved unworkable

GM robotaxi unit suspended all operations after a driverless car dragged a pedestrian 20 feet. GM wrote down $8B.

A SPAC-fueled neobank for Latinos that burned $30M trying to crack a market it misunderstood.

Grew from flowers to everything wedding, and wilted under the weight of it all.

The cybersecurity unicorn backed by SoftBank and Google that raised $900M and then laid off half its workforce when the Broadcom acquisition fell through

The AutoML unicorn that automated its own irrelevance

The "first decentralized metaverse casino" built inside Decentraland — DG token fell 99%, ICE poker wearables became worthless, and the metaverse never arrived.

One safety incident at Barrick's Cortez mine ended a $42M robotics bet.

The 'learning experience platform' that couldn't survive its own market correction.

A wellness-building empire worth $237M that couldn't survive post-COVID office budget reality.

The decentralized social network that raised $200M from Sequoia and a16z, then watched DESO token fall 97%

The Medicare Advantage startup raised $1.8B and generated $900M+ in losses proving the model doesn't work at any scale

Rent-to-own homes built on cheap debt that the Fed took away

Unilever paid $1B for subscription razors — then sold the business 7 years later for approximately 15 cents on the dollar

Machine learning for title insurance at $3.23B. Sold for $6.29M. A 99.8% discount.

The ADHD telehealth app that shut down suddenly, leaving patients without prescriptions

ADHD telehealth startup raised $50M by offering fast online ADHD assessments and stimulant prescriptions—then DOJ and DEA investigations ended its core business model.

Dynamic electricity pricing's poster child became a cautionary tale after Winter Storm Uri.

Lithia's $235M bet on captive auto lending imploded when subprime borrowers defaulted en masse.

Drobo built a beloved RAID storage system for creatives and SMBs. Cloud storage made it obsolete. Bankrupt 2023.

Mushroom packaging pioneer found that fungi couldn't outcompete styrofoam on cost.

The employer primary care startup raised $60M to replace corporate insurance and shut down when the model failed

Smart battery software outsmarted by OEMs building it themselves.

The IT management platform for SMBs that raised $200M, lost its customer base in the 2022 tech downturn, and cut half its workforce

A SPAC-fueled home battery dream that shattered on supply chain reality.

A niche streaming bundle for geeks, dissolved by a corporate merger that had nothing to do with its performance.

The ad-free "Facebook killer" that discovered ads are what make social networks economically viable.

Y Combinator-backed autonomous trucking startup SPAC'd at $5.2B. Filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy 15 months later. Sold assets for $70M.

Cognitive AI for supply chains that couldn't survive the cognitive dissonance of enterprise sales.

Privacy fears and slow enterprise sales killed ambient fall detection before it could scale

The biotech that raised $1.8 billion promising to sell cancer drugs at 90% off list price — then failed its clinical trials, collapsed its SPAC valuation from $3.4B to near zero, and merged away

Walmart couldn't save a financial wellness app that employees wouldn't use.

A venue booking pioneer smothered under a burger delivery giant's balance sheet.

The note-taking unicorn that tried to become a platform — and got outclassed by apps that just took better notes.

Wireless headphones for senior group activities—then COVID cancelled group activities for two years.

The value-based care infrastructure company that went public at $2.4B and spent a decade losing money

AI SDR platform acquired and then buried inside a legacy CCaaS vendor.

Five million women trusted it; enterprise customers didn't trust it enough.

Rebranded with a media deal, buried by vet inflation it never priced in.

The payments infrastructure startup raised $150M to compete with Stripe and found that impossible

Crypto custody infrastructure for institutions — raised $8B, then institutions stopped arriving

A Fitbit for dogs that was out-resourced, out-marketed, and out-distributed.

The $8B freight unicorn that went through two CEOs in a year and laid off 30% while SoftBank watched

The lease-transfer marketplace that hit a wall every landlord, lawyer, and state law put in front of it.

Flood sensors that couldn't weather the storm of FEMA contract collapse.

Smart parking, dumb supply chain.

Cash-offer proptech ran out of air in the rate-hike downdraft

K-pop NFT fan tokens met the crypto winter and nobody was buying.

Raised $725M to tokenize gaming economies no gamer asked for.

The $500M AI-first subscription clinic that closed all its physical locations in November 2023 after burning through its capital

The $100/month subscription primary care startup raised $225M and shut down with 24 hours' notice to its patients

JPMorgan paid $175M for 4.25M users — 3.9M were fake

Session replay unicorn that burned through growth-at-all-costs

SMB invoice lender collapsed when credit markets tightened and charge-offs spiked.

The blockchain gaming platform reached $7B market cap then was torn apart by a $130M insider exploit and co-founder war

The pixel-art virtual office raised $77M during COVID — and discovered that nobody wants to move a virtual avatar to a meeting

The biggest crypto lender nobody outside crypto had heard of — until FTX collapsed and froze $175M of its assets.

Interactive live events platform raised $150M from Sony and Bitkraft to let audiences vote on game outcomes—then shut down in 2023 as the "massively interactive live event" category failed to find its audience.

P2P car sharing with $300M from SoftBank. Insurance costs and maintenance ate every dollar. Filed Chapter 11 in December 2023.

Urban escape cabins became a debt trap when post-COVID travel normalized and rates rose.

A $3B mental health merger that destroyed brand value and ended with mass layoffs within 18 months.

SoftBank-backed AI procurement marketplace that burned $300M without sustainable economics.

GM's $10B robotaxi bet suspended after an accident, a cover-up, and a California license revocation

Pre-prepped dinner kits couldn't out-innovate the industry's systemic churn problem.

One failed kidney trial dissolved a $165M precision medicine company in 60 days.

Plant-based seafood proved a novelty, not a habit, for most consumers.

Google's $1B+ cloud gaming platform — shut down in 18 months after launching without games.

A senior-simplified tablet overwhelmed by Amazon and Apple offering 'good enough' accessibility features.

The voice AI contact center specialist — commoditized by GPT-4 and Whisper before reaching enterprise scale.

SPAC'd at $1.5B on eco-cleaning mission — stock fell 99% as B Corp values couldn't plug the cash burn

The employer-paid tuition benefits unicorn reached $4.4B but couldn't survive when its corporate clients cut education budgets

Remote-controlled rental cars sounded futuristic until one teleoperator per car killed the economics.

The on-demand cleaning platform that couldn't keep its cleaners — or its customers.

Built commercial real estate intelligence just as CRE imploded.

A $3B mindfulness-meets-therapy merger that collapsed under cultural incompatibility and $220M in wasted capital.

The product analytics startup valued at $900M in 2021 — acquired by Contentsquare for ~$200M in 2023 as Amplitude and PostHog ate the market from both ends

Built mobile-first support but couldn't outrun the giants.

Tech couldn't fix the home care labor crisis that swallowed $54M

Flat-fee real estate agent replacement that couldn't outlast the correction

Virtual events unicorn. $7.75B during COVID. Events returned. Hopin sold for $15M.

The $73M DTC contact lens disruptor couldn't blink past regulatory and acquisition cost pressure.

The health data connectivity platform raised $50M promising to unlock patient data and was shut down by Centivo

The Peloton of rowing drowned when the home fitness tide went out.

The hydrogen truck startup that reported 87 vehicle deliveries and had actually delivered about 20

Ugly vegetables delivered to save the planet. The planet didn't pay enough to keep the lights on.

$2.1B raised on the science of meat replacement — then consumers ordered chicken instead

YC pedigree, $25M raised, and a founder misconduct scandal that no CFO service could clean up.

A billion users, sub-1% checkout rates — Meta killed Instagram Live Shopping in 3 years.

Sequoia-backed internal tool builder shut down in a market Retool already owned.

Social events app raised $170M from SoftBank at $1.17B unicorn valuation. SEC investigation found 95% of reported users were bots. Abraham Shafi charged with securities fraud.

A social events app that became a $1.17B unicorn — then the SEC revealed 95% of its 20 million reported users were bots, and the company shut down.

Former NSA Director's cybersecurity company. SPAC at $1.2B. Chapter 11 in September 2023.

Founded by the NSA Director. Raised $109M. IPO'd via SPAC. Filed Chapter 11 when enterprise contracts never materialized at the scale promised.

The AI writing startup that raised $131 million and became a unicorn in 18 months — then watched ChatGPT ship the same product for free and lost 30% of its team

The LatAm B2B fintech raised $180M at $2.1B offering corporate cards to startups and got crushed when startups died

SoftBank's bet on creator IP arbitrage imploded when ad CPMs crashed 40%.

Rode the 2020 DEI wave only to crash when corporate checkbooks closed.

Wayfair's budget home brand — shut down when Wayfair itself nearly collapsed

DEI recruiting marketplace collapsed as Fortune 500 clients retreated from diversity hiring pledges.

The kids' coding school that raised $65M on COVID demand and shut down in 72 hours when that demand evaporated.

A decade building smart senior living tech, stranded when the growth round never came.

The men's hair loss telehealth brand squeezed out by generics and bigger rivals

Kroger's ghost kitchen partner raised $400M — then closed almost everything

Door-to-door leasing tech had a 18-month payback period no one would fund through.

A peer mental health app destroyed by secretly using GPT-3 to respond to 4,000 vulnerable users.

The CRM startup that Meta paid $1B+ to acquire in 2022 and sold 18 months later for a reported $130M — a 90% value destruction inside one of the world's largest tech companies

The digital term life insurance platform that raised $194M, could not reach profitability, and shut down in November 2023.

The ISA pioneer whose revenue model collapsed when tech stopped hiring.

The pay-nothing coding bootcamp whose income share agreement model was declared an unlicensed consumer loan — then collapsed under 75% layoffs and FTC scrutiny

Hourly-worker hiring app burned $15M before the pandemic labor crisis it was built for ended.

The AI chronic disease management unicorn raised $100M+ but chronic disease management economics never scaled

Tried to make podcast listening social when listeners prefer to listen alone.

The $112M observability platform built on Elasticsearch that couldn't survive the commoditization of its own foundation

Electric pickup truck SPAC built on fabricated pre-order numbers

The world's most advanced luxury EV company loses $200,000 on every car it makes

$5B employer mental health platform raised $900M — then 30% of the workforce was cut as the market recalibrated

The startup tax credit platform backed by a16z that automated billions in SMB claims then quietly closed

Connected 100 diversity job boards but couldn't connect revenue dots.

Medical drone pioneer that crashed before reaching scale.

Crypto's Bloomberg — became a cost center when the crypto market no longer needed terminal subscriptions

Microsoft's virtual assistant — outcompeted by Alexa, beaten by Siri, killed by ChatGPT

Psychiatric telehealth startup that abandoned hundreds of patients mid-treatment with 10 days notice.

A $500M mirror that reflected Lululemon's biggest acquisition mistake.

The connected fitness mirror Lululemon acquired for $500M at the peak of COVID home fitness — then bricked in 2023 when Apple Fitness+ and Peloton commoditized the category overnight

Web3 Substack turned into a ghost town when the NFT hype evaporated.

Smart contact lens startup raised $216M over eight years to put a microLED display inside a contact lens—then shut down its consumer AR programme in 2023.

Kevin Rose's $1B NFT membership club that peaked in April 2022 — then CC0 licensing, a failed Ethereum migration, and team departures left holders with owls worth 95% less.

The celebrity-backed crypto on-ramp that raised $555M as the crypto on-ramp market evaporated

The Firebase of Web3 ran out of developers to serve.

The startup financial planning platform raised $26M then got crushed between Anaplan and ChatGPT

The digital whiteboard that raised $118M at $2B — then FigJam and Miro took the market and cut 12% of staff twice

Open-source Alexa killer died fighting trillion-dollar free products for eight years.

FDA-approved antibiotic Xenleta couldn't survive the broken economics of the US antibiotic market.

Automated data marketplace crushed between GDPR hammers and CCPA nails before it could scale.

The AI shopping assistant that raised $38M claiming its AI automated purchases — then journalists discovered human workers in the Philippines were doing it manually

Fish-safe turbines that couldn't survive the slow current of US hydro permitting.

AI fuel savings for ships—great ROI pitch, fatal renewal rate problem.