# Phind: AI Search Engine for Developers, Shut Down 2026

> Phind was an AI search engine for developers from a Y Combinator company. It shut down in January 2026. No robots.txt rules are needed.

Phind was an AI search engine for software developers. It shut down in January 2026. Site owners do not need robots.txt rules or firewall rules for Phind.

## What Phind was

Phind came from a Y Combinator company of the Summer 2022 batch, founded by Michael Royzen and Justin Wei ([Y Combinator](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/phind)). In February 2023, Phind presented itself on Hacker News as a generative AI search engine for developers ([Show HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34884338)). Phind combined web search with AI-written answers. In 2023, it used GPT-4 ([Show HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37034951)). Later, it used its own models, such as Phind-70B ([Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39471388)).

## Shutdown

On January 12, 2026, a Hacker News post linked to a shutdown notice on phind.com ([Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46594533)). Users also reported an email about the shutdown ([Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46596149)). The Y Combinator company directory now lists Phind as inactive.

## Crawler and opt-out

Phind did not publish a crawler name, a user agent string or a robots.txt token. There is nothing to allow or block now. If your robots.txt file has a group for Phind, the group has no effect, and you can remove it.

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