specification: API Commons Lifecycle
specificationVersion: '0.1'
provider: AK Steel Holding
providerId: ak-steel-holding
generated: '2026-08-30'
method: searched
source: >-
  Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. news release "Cleveland-Cliffs Completes Acquisition of
  AK Steel" (HTTP 200, fetched 2026-08-30), plus live DNS/HTTP probes of
  aksteel.com, www.aksteel.com and ir.aksteel.com on the same date.
docs: https://www.clevelandcliffs.com/news/news-releases/detail/35/cleveland-cliffs-completes-acquisition-of-ak-steel
description: >-
  Entity lifecycle record. AK Steel Holding Corporation is retired: it was
  acquired by Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. and ceased to exist as an independent
  company on 2020-03-13. This artifact records the retirement of the company's
  digital surface, not the deprecation of an API — AK Steel never published a
  public API, developer portal or machine-readable contract.
entity:
  status: retired
  status_date: '2020-03-13'
  event: acquisition
  successor: Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.
  successor_website: https://www.clevelandcliffs.com
  successor_provider_id: cleveland-cliffs
  evidence:
    - url: https://www.clevelandcliffs.com/news/news-releases/detail/35/cleveland-cliffs-completes-acquisition-of-ak-steel
      status: 200
      note: >-
        "Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. (NYSE: CLF) announced today that it has
        successfully completed the acquisition of AK Steel Holding Corporation."
surfaces:
  - name: AK Steel corporate website
    url: https://www.aksteel.com/
    status: retired
    observed: '2026-08-30'
    http_status: <no response>
    note: >-
      DNS answers NOERROR with no address record; curl exits 6. Last Internet
      Archive capture 2021-07-08.
  - name: AK Steel Investor Relations
    url: https://ir.aksteel.com/
    status: retired
    observed: '2026-08-30'
    http_status: <no response>
    note: >-
      DNS answers NOERROR with no address record. Last Internet Archive capture
      2021-10-22. Investor information for the combined company is now published
      at https://www.clevelandcliffs.com/investors (HTTP 200, 2026-08-30).
  - name: aksteel.com domain registration
    status: retained
    observed: '2026-08-30'
    note: >-
      Domain remains registered to the successor (Cloudflare nameservers,
      registry expiry 2027-12-17) and routes mail to
      clevelandcliffs-com.mail.protection.outlook.com, but publishes no web host.
      Retained for email and brand protection only.
versioning:
  policy: none-published
  note: No API, no versioning policy.
deprecation:
  policy: none-published
  sunset_header: false
  deprecation_header: false
  note: >-
    No API deprecation policy exists because no API was ever published. The
    company-level retirement is recorded under entity: above.
status_page:
  published: false
  note: No status page found for AK Steel Holding or for the successor entity.
sla:
  published: false
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com