An extended family member is a software engineer who has worked in wireless networking for decades and decades, including being personally involved in the development of key parts of 5g.
In the 00s there was some company that had great tech. Surely useful for the future. He put a shitload of money in there. On each paycheck he put in more and more. But although the company had great tech, it didn't end up being the market winner for whatever reason. As the stock dropped and dropped he bought more and more. After all, it was the best tech.
He lost a fortune.
It is probably easy to look back and say "well, I knew that CUDA was easier to use than OpenMPI ages ago, it was obvious that nvidia would blow up."