The tech companies going public after the last recession are all like this. They squeeze out as much funding they can from investors and when that dries up or when the investors demand their money back the company dumps their stock on the unsuspecting public and makes money. Most of them don’t make money and have terrible balance sheets but still somehow are “great” “unicorns”. I don’t invest in any one of them.
The investors themselves aren't blameless in this. It's on them for believing that companies who literally torch money will somehow present them with gold nuggets in return.
It's succeeded for others in the past, but this is very clearly a high-risk field, with the inherent downsides that involved in it.
At best venture capital seems to be a sexier, private way to fund R&D, which is often so unprofitable it requires public funding. I think there is social benefit, most obviously when venture-backed startups offer a useful service below cost to the public, but financially there are better investments.
