Sometimes an apparently good idea, a big raise from a big-name VC, and a sea of well-connected angel investors is not enough.

Less than a year after launching, Yupp.ai is closing its business, co-founders Pankaj Gupta and Gilad Mishne announced on Tuesday.

Yupp offered a crowdsourced AI model-picking service. It allowed consumers to test and compare results from a supply of 800 AI models for free, including the state-of-the-art ones from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic. Yupp would return multiple replies from the prompt request, including information or images, and users would offer feedback on which models worked best for them and why.

The idea was to generate anonymized data on what people actually need from AI that the model…