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 how much momentum the hype train has gained. He found that interest in AI has seemingly 10x-ed from the first quarter of 2019, when just 39 AI-related posts managed to crack the list. By contrast, the third quarter of 2025, which is just barely halfway through its calendar period, has already se