Killed by LLM

Online education platform offering homework help, textbook solutions, and tutoring.

“Stock down 99%. ChatGPT does homework for free.”

The dominant Q&A platform for software developers with 200M+ monthly visits at peak.

“New questions down 76%. Developers ask ChatGPT instead.”

World's largest customer service outsourcing company employing hundreds of thousands.

“Lost 29% in one day after Klarna replaced 700 agents with AI.”

World's second-largest BPO company providing customer experience outsourcing.

“Stock down 37% as AI chatbots threaten the entire BPO industry.”

World's largest education publisher providing textbooks, digital learning, and assessments.

“Lost $1.19B in market cap in two days from Chegg's ChatGPT confession.”

Major academic publisher of textbooks and scholarly journals.

“Shut 19 journals over AI fraud. Now sells authors' work to train AI without opt-out.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning digital news outlet, part of BuzzFeed Inc.

“Replaced journalists with AI quizzes. Shut down the newsroom entirely.”

Iconic tech news and reviews website with 150M+ monthly visits at peak.

“Pivoted to AI-generated articles full of errors. Traffic down 70%.”

Dominant health information website where people looked up symptoms and medical conditions.

“People ask ChatGPT about their symptoms now. Traffic down 43%.”

Q&A platform where users asked questions and received answers from other users and experts.

“Traffic down 28%. 11% of answers are now AI-generated anyway.”

Language learning app that employed thousands of contractors for content creation and translation.

“Cut 10% of contractors. CEO declared company 'AI-first.' Stock went up.”

Buy-now-pay-later fintech that replaced 700 customer service agents with an AI chatbot.

“Fired 700 agents for AI. Quality tanked. Now rehiring humans.”

Coding bootcamp provider acquired by 2U for $750M, running programs through university partnerships.

“Enrollment dropped 40%. $750M acquisition written off entirely.”

Prominent coding bootcamp offering intensive training in web development, data science, and UX.

“Why pay $15K to learn coding when AI writes code for you?”

Boston-based coding bootcamp focused on web development training.

“Job placement fell from 90% to below 60%. Suspended operations.”

Global language services industry worth $52B, employing hundreds of thousands of translators.

“Revenue declined $2.3B. Translators report 60-80% income drops.”

Millions of freelance writers producing blog posts, SEO content, and marketing copy.

“Writing gigs dropped 30% in 8 months. 69% of writers feel threatened.”

Indian e-commerce startup providing online store setup and customer support.

“CEO proudly replaced 90% of support staff with AI. Backlash ensued.”

Microsoft-backed AI startup valued at $1.2B promising no-code app building via AI assistant.

“A $1.2B AI wrapper. General-purpose LLMs made it pointless.”

Ex-Apple team that built a $699 screenless AI wearable with $241M in funding.

“Spent $241M on an AI pin. Sold to HP for $116M. Bricked all customer devices.”

Largest freelance marketplace platforms connecting clients with writers, coders, and designers.

“Downloads down 20%+. Traditional gig demand cratering as clients use AI directly.”

Marketing and CRM platform that was an SEO leader with massive organic traffic.

“AI Overviews ate their SEO traffic. Organic visits down 80%.”

Iconic 70-year-old sports media brand managed by The Arena Group, a publicly traded digital media company.

“Published AI-generated articles under fake authors. Lost the brand entirely.”

Digital news startup that launched in May 2023 with $50M funding, betting on scale-driven ad revenue.

“Burned $50M in 8 months betting on a model AI search was already killing.”

Once valued at $5.7B, Vice was the defining millennial digital media brand with TV, print, and web operations.

“From $5.7B valuation to bankruptcy. Stopped publishing on Vice.com entirely.”

Australian data annotation company that supplied training data to Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon.

“Built the data that trained AI. Then AI made their services obsolete. Stock down 99%.”

AI content marketing platform valued at $1.5B that helped marketers generate copy using GPT models.

“A $1.5B GPT wrapper. ChatGPT went mainstream and clients stopped paying.”

China's #1 public relations agency and 11th largest globally, with $7.26B revenue.

“Replaced all outsourced copywriters and designers with AI. Stock surged 19%.”

Dominant stock photography platforms with combined archives of hundreds of millions of images.

“Why buy stock photos when DALL-E generates exactly what you need? Merging to survive.”

Healthcare AI unicorn valued at $4B promising to automate hospital administrative processes.

“Raised $902M selling AI hype. The AI didn't actually work. Shut down entirely.”

America's largest newspaper chain owning USA Today and hundreds of local papers across 46 states.

“Workforce down 47%. Now using AI to generate articles and fake journalist profiles.”

Leading online learning platform partnering with universities to offer courses, certificates, and degrees.

“Stock hit all-time low. Why pay for courses when AI teaches you directly?”

The entire ecosystem of web publishers dependent on Google search referral traffic for ad revenue.

“Google answers the question itself now. Why would anyone click through?”

AI-powered writing assistant with 30M daily users, facing existential pressure from ChatGPT commoditizing its core feature.

“Growth stalled. ChatGPT ate its lunch. CEO, CTO, and CPO all replaced.”

Leading transcription marketplace with 70,000+ freelance transcriptionists providing human-quality transcripts.

“AI transcription at $0.25/min killed human transcription at $1.99/min.”

Peer-to-peer homework help platform with 350M+ users across 35 countries.

“Laid off 30% of workforce. Shut down Indian operations entirely.”

AI startup behind chatbot Pi that raised $1.5B, then was effectively acqui-hired by Microsoft.

“Raised $1.5B. Microsoft took the team for $650M. Shell company remains.”

AI agent startup that raised $400M to build software task automation, acqui-hired by Amazon before shipping.

“Raised $400M. Amazon took 80% of staff. Never shipped a product.”

AI chatbot platform for conversational characters that Google acqui-hired back for $2.7B.

“Google paid $2.7B to get its own ex-employees back. Now a zombie startup.”

Premium subscription product from Tailwind CSS, the popular utility-first CSS framework.

“Devs ask AI instead of reading docs. Documentation traffic down 40%. Revenue down 80%.”

Visual discovery and social media platform with 450M+ monthly active users.

“Cut 15% of workforce to become 'AI-forward.' Stock plummeted on the news.”

Major global bank with $205B in assets, undergoing massive AI-driven transformation.

“Cutting 20,000 jobs by 2026. Mandated AI training for 175,000 employees to survive.”

One of the world's largest chemical manufacturers with 164,000 employees globally.

“Cut 4,500 jobs to fund AI. 'Transform to Outperform' while posting $2.4B annual loss.”

World's largest package delivery company with operations in 220+ countries.

“78,000 jobs cut in 2 years. Building 'Network of the Future' with automated mega-hubs.”

Meta's division building VR/AR hardware and the metaverse, employing 15,000+ people.

“$71B+ lost on the metaverse. Now pivoting to AI glasses after VR dreams collapsed.”

Leading design software company behind AutoCAD, used by architects, engineers, and designers worldwide.

“2,350 jobs cut in one year. AI tools can now automate 80-90% of routine design tasks.”

Enterprise software giant with 164,000 employees, racing to build AI data centers.

“May cut 30,000 jobs to fund $156B AI data center buildout. Banks won't finance it.”

Tax preparation and personal finance software giant behind TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Credit Karma.

“AI could do your taxes for free. Wall Street noticed. Stock down 50%.”

Global legal research and professional information giant behind Westlaw, used by nearly every law firm.

“Decades of legal data moats breached by a single AI plugin. Down 17.5% in one day.”

Online legal services platform for consumers and small businesses offering LLC formation, trademarks, and wills.

“Made law simple enough for everyone. Then AI made it free.”

Work management and project collaboration SaaS platform with per-seat pricing model.

“Managed everyone's work until AI agents managed to do it cheaper. Stock down 70%.”

Enterprise IT service management and workflow automation platform powering Fortune 500 operations.

“Its best customers used AI to need fewer seats. It worked too well.”

Dating app platform with 50M+ users that pioneered women-first messaging.

“Swiped right on AI, left on a third of its workforce. Market cap down 91%.”

India's $283B IT outsourcing sector employing 5.67 million people — 10% of the country's GDP.

“Five million jobs built on billable hours, facing an AI that bills by the second.”

The world's largest CRM company, whose support division deployed AI agents to replace thousands of humans.

“CEO said he 'needs less heads.' Cut support staff from 9,000 to 5,000.”

Enterprise IT infrastructure and PC giant with operations worldwide.

“Sold machines to the world, then replaced its workforce with them. 25,000 jobs gone.”

UK telecommunications and pay-TV provider owned by Comcast, operating major call centres across Britain.

“Called it customer service. Then stopped taking the call. 3 call centres closed.”