What is the most expensive startup failure?

Juicero is the commonly mentioned one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juicero

Maybe not the most expensive, but one of the silliest - AllAdvantage https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000...

Here's a recent site listing 200+ startup failures with approximate funding amounts.

https://www.cbinsights.com/research/biggest-startup-failures...

Magic Leap ($3.5B funding) for a second-rate Hololens competitor. They're not dead yet, but the CEO is a pedigreed butcher from Microsoft.

Star Citizen is a video game that had a crowd-funding campaign in 2012, ten years ago, and has since raised over $500 million from its player base and another ~$150 million from private groups.

It's still in alpha.

Most of the player base have resigned to calling the game vaporware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Citizen#Delays_and_extend...

In a sense, Uber. Billions of dollars invested with the promise of winning the race to self-driving. It wasn't the only massive mistake they made, but after they killed that homeless lady in Arizona, they killed their self-driving units as well.

Theranos comes to mind. Reaching back a bit more - Webvan, Pets.com, MySpace.

Probably not the most expensive but certainly one of the most prominently featured failure in the early days of the internet.

Govworks.com by that sleezy dude Kaleil Isaza Tuzman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pjk-WmtNs3g&t=19s

Not a startup, but Facebook has dumped billions into "the metaverse" and it's a stunning failure.

What was that recent celeb-laden attempt to make a Netflix for short form and vertical entertainment?

Earn (previously 21 BTC) was not the biggest but it clearly made little sense from the beginning.

WeWork perhaps.

FTX?

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