Yara AI

Yara AI, clinically inspired mental-health support chatbot, died 2025-11. Cause of death: Conscience, mostly. Out of money since July, the founder decided he couldn't in good conscience pitch an interested investor on a product he now thought was dangerous.

Died: 2025-11
Cause of death: Conscience, mostly. Out of money since July, the founder decided he couldn't in good conscience pitch an interested investor on a product he now thought was dangerous.

“Died of scruples. Rarest disease in the industry.”

The obituary

Yara AI was a mental-health support chatbot, pitched as a 'clinically-inspired platform' offering 'empathetic, evidence-based guidance', co-founded by tech executive Joe Braidwood and clinical psychologist Richard Stott. It sat in the most consequential corner of the companion industry: not entertainment, not romance, but structured help for people who might not be reaching a human professional at all.

In November 2025 the founders shut it down, discontinued the free product and cancelled a subscription service they were about to launch, citing safety. Money was part of it: Fortune reported that the largely bootstrapped company, with 'low thousands' of users, had run out of money in July. What sets Yara apart is why it didn't raise more. Braidwood told Fortune he couldn't in good conscience pitch an interested VC fund while he doubted an AI could be kept safe with someone in crisis. The site now says only: 'we've made the difficult decision to wind down Yara's services.'

Every other resident of this graveyard died of money, lawyers, regulators, founders, or neglect. Yara ran short of money too, but money was on offer, and it said no. The unsettling corollary is what its absence implies about the survivors: the companies still operating AI mental-health companions either cleared the bar Yara didn't trust itself to clear, or never stopped to look at it.

Sources

Deaths, lobotomies, and vanishings are recorded as part of our tracking methodology — the newsletter carries the obituaries as they happen.