They absorbed a few employees who are still there and are just as confused as none of the tech they spent so much money on ever got used.
Maybe it was somehow a giant tax write off, or just buying out the competition?
Overall, I agree with the theories proposed in response to your post — either incompetence of their leadership or favor to an investor. In our case, it was a bit of both and the latter part was clear beforehand. Their crudely constructed plan was to take our industry data to improve their models, but they were not privy to any of it so effectively all they bought was a bunch of tech they couldn’t manage to integrate since all of our tech leads left in the first two months. That’s what they get for not providing an incentive to stay at all, which again hints at both incompetence and a favor.
Broadcast.com?