Most favourable assumption: They have a policy to remove companies from their network and site that violate certain rules - like fraud.
Least favourable assumption: They are doing damage control with their association. This article does not even mention Y Combinator initially funded them.
I have zero inside information about this but since YC ejects companies that break its ethics code, it's possible that we disowned this company quite a while ago.
Edit: I just checked an internal page that I go to when I need info about a YC startup and it says "Removed", so I think that's what happened, and probably rather early in whatever process led to this outcome.
Wow! That's really interesting. I was typing in some random numbers looking at what other companies were in this directory, how large it went, etc etc, and I hit quite a few of these missing pages. I wonder if all of those companies got ejected for breaking the code of ethics, or if there are other reasons?
I'm afraid I have no idea—I'm pretty far removed from that side of the business—but my guess would be that it's probably more complicated and there are likely a lot of different possible reasons.
YC has funded thousands of startups, so there's inevitably a long tail of weird cases. People tend not to take that into account when assessing particular datapoints.
I mean, makes sense.
Can we get a new category for "Fraud" under ycombinator.com/companies?
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/718
Archived version: https://archive.is/cbIIT