The AI Feature Kill Decision: When Metrics Say Yes but Users Say No
· 10 min read
Forty-two percent of companies abandoned most of their AI initiatives in 2025, up from 17% a year earlier. The striking part isn't the abandonment rate — it's the delay. Most of those projects had been in various stages of "almost ready" for six to twelve months before someone finally pulled the plug. The demo worked. The metrics looked plausible. The team was invested. And so the feature lingered, burning budget and credibility, long after the evidence pointed toward shutdown.
The hardest product decision in AI isn't what to build. It's when to stop building something that technically works but practically doesn't.
