They burned.
We documented it.

One regulatory announcement in July 2021 destroyed 17Zuoye and its $350M investment overnight — the Chinese government banned for-profit K-12 tutoring and ended an entire sector

Hamburg Airbnb competitor raised 12 million euros, survived eight years in the shadow of Airbnb, and was absorbed by Wimdu right before both shut down.

Endpoint resilience pioneer taken private by Crosspoint Capital after losing ground

Silicon Valley agtech startup that built the world's first autonomous apple-picking robot but shut down when commercial deployment proved too expensive.

Electric propulsion for CubeSats that could not reach commercial orbit

Achaogen spent 15 years developing a new antibiotic, won FDA approval in June 2018 — and filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April 2019, just 10 months after approval, because hospital purchasing refused to pay for its drug.

Southeast Asia ecommerce enabler raised $70M then sold at discount as Lazada and Shopee dominated

Gothenburg's green acrylic startup couldn't scale bio-based plastics economics to commercial viability

Legal billing intelligence startup raised $15M but law firms refused to adopt AI billing analysis

Addi raised 145 million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz to bring BNPL to Colombian and Brazilian retail — and exited Brazil, cut 25 percent of staff, and wrote down its valuation in 2022 when its credit book could not survive rising rates in markets with already-high consumer default rates.

FMCW LiDAR pioneer SPAC'd at $2.1B but autonomous vehicle market moved too slowly

LiDAR startup SPAC valuation collapsed as autonomous vehicle timelines slipped by years

MIT-born emotion AI pioneer acquired by Smart Eye — a cautionary tale of niche AI markets.

Nordic accounting marketplace overtaken by the tools it aggregated

Ethiopian crop prediction AI destroyed by Tigray conflict and agricultural disruption

Blockchain-based crop traceability startup that raised grants but could not commercialize in smallholder markets.

Ghanaian digital grain marketplace could not survive the cash conversion cycle in smallholder farming

Colombia's coffee traceability startup blocked by the certifiers that controlled the data standards

The precision agriculture platform built for farmers who didn't have smartphones yet

Mexico's agri-fintech competing against the government subsidized credit programs targeting its own customers

Colombian precision farming SaaS ran dry before the crop cycle turned profitable

Paraguayan precision agritech found soy farmers too digitally resistant to convert profitably

Chile's precision agriculture startup beaten by the ERP integrations its customers already had

Digital payments for post-sanctions Sudan — caught between two revolutions