The Moment the AI Hype Cycle Really Kicked In
Does it feel like news about artificial intelligence is inescapable? You’re not just imagining it. Zach Perkel, the Principal and Director of Applied AI at enterprise AI firm Fractal, tracked the number of AI-related posts that managed to crack the top 10 stories on Y Combinator’s Hacker News, and found that we are experiencing peak AI (so far). Perkel analyzed 24,910 articles and posts that managed to crack the Hacker News top 10 from January 1st, 2019, to August 15th, 2025, to determine just