Artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever to build an app. New releases on Apple Inc.'s App Store surged by about 80 percent earlier this year as developers coded their way to new software widgets for markets such as wellness and productivity.

But follow the money in Silicon Valley and something strange is happening: Mobile apps are disappearing from some of tech's most promising startups. AI is the reason for that too.

San Francisco-based Y Combinator is the world's most prestigious startup accelerator--a short program that helps new firms grow quickly by providing money, guidance and connections across the tech industry--with an estimated 10,000 teams applying every three months from all over the world. Typically, only about 1 percent get in. Alumni include the founders of Airbnb Inc., Stripe LLC, Coinbase Global Inc., DoorDash Inc. and Reddit Inc.; OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman was one of its first participants.

Of the 195 startups in the program's last spring batch, only eight had a native mobile app as their main product, according to a Y Combinator spokeswoman. Go back to 2013, and around 15 percent of Y Combinator startups were in the app business, with the rest building marketplaces, crowdfunding platforms or on-demand delivery services. By 2016, that proportion had declined to 8 percent, before hovering around 4 percent between 2019 and 2022. In the last three years the average has dropped to between 0.5 percent and 1 percent.

What gives? "Apps and SaaS dead," one venture capitalist, referring to software-as-a-service, texted me recently........

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