Shutdown
Jan 2026Founder Michael Royzen announced Phind would shut down on Jan. 16, 2026; paid users received prorated refunds and data export was available until Jan. 30, 2026.
SourceCompany research
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Jul 30, 2026
Overview
Phind was a San Francisco–based, YC S22 developer search company that built an AI answer engine for programmers, combining multi-step reasoning, cited search results, code examples, and a generative UI; it shut down in January 2026 after a late-2025 funding round.
Primary product
AI answer engine / search engine for developers
Founded
2022
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, United States
Team size
1-10
Industry
Software Development
Sub-industry
AI search engine / developer tools
Offices
San Francisco, California, United States
Netherlands
201 Folsom Street, Suite 11G, San Francisco, CA 94105, United States
Business model
freemium
subscription SaaS
B2B team plans
consumer self-serve
Funding
People & investors
Founders
Co-founder & CTO
Work & culture
Developer-first and fast-iteration oriented; public descriptions emphasize product direction driven by usage data, Discord, in-person events, and email feedback, with rapid shipping and strong focus on technical workflows.
Compensation
No public salary bands, equity ranges, or visa policy were found. Public job postings were not available at the time of research.
Product & market
Pricing
Freemium subscription SaaS with a free tier plus Pro/Business paid plans; historical pricing included Pro at $20/month and Business at $40/user/month.
Differentiators
- —multi-step reasoning
- —generative UI
- —source-cited technical answers
- —code examples
- —developer-specific focus
- —custom LLMs
- —VS Code integration
- —fast answer generation
Technology
AWS EC2
AWS ECS
AWS ParallelCluster
Terraform
Cloud Map
NVIDIA A100
NVIDIA H100
TensorRT-LLM
React
Next.js
VS Code extension
GitHub
LLMs
Customers
developers
software engineers
programmers
technical teams
computer science students
ML developers
Competitors
Perplexity
ChatGPT with web search
Claude with web search
Google AI Overviews
GitHub Copilot Chat
Bing
Devv
Grepper
searchcode
Scale & contact
Estimated revenue
Around $800K ARR at peak (per Justin Wei's LinkedIn profile); no current revenue disclosed after shutdown.
Estimated monthly visits
36.4K
Traffic estimate as of Apr 2026
Signals & risks
Latest news
AI Graveyard · Jun 2026
An archive entry summarized Phind’s launch, funding, and shutdown timeline and characterized the company as a casualty of competition in AI search.
Intelligent Tools · Jan 2026
A post-mortem style article described Phind’s shutdown as a consequence of increasing competition from foundation-model platforms adding web search and coding features.
Hacker News · Jan 2026
A post from founder Michael Royzen said Phind would shut down on Jan. 16, 2026, with prorated refunds for paid users and data export available until Jan. 30, 2026.
Axios · Dec 2025
Axios reported that Phind raised $10.4M, with founder and CEO Michael Royzen as the source, highlighting the company’s developer-focused AI answer engine.
Jobs and careers at Phind
0 jobs at Phind
No open positions
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