LeEco

In 2004, Chinese entrepreneur Jia Yueting founded a video streaming company called Le.com, which would later become the sprawling conglomerate LeEco. Riding the wave of China's growing internet market, Le.com became the first video streaming company in the country to go public, listing on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010. This early success provided the foundation for a much grander vision. Jia's ambition was to create a vertically integrated "ecosystem" of content and hardware. LeEco expanded aggressively into smartphones, smart TVs, and even electric vehicles with a stake in Faraday Future. The strategy was to sell hardware at or below cost, hoping to profit from subscriptions and content. This approach led to a period of rapid growth and international expansion, with LeEco entering markets like India and the United States in 2016. The company made bold moves, including purchasing Yahoo's former campus in Santa Clara for $250 million. However, this rapid, debt-fueled expansion proved unsustainable. By late 2016, signs of financial distress emerged as the company struggled to raise new funds to support its many ventures. In a 2017 letter, Jia admitted the company had over-extended itself. A planned $2 billion acquisition of TV maker Vizio fell through, and the company began significant layoffs in its US operations. Jia Yueting eventually resigned as CEO, moved to the US to focus on Faraday Future, and later filed for personal bankruptcy. Today, LeEco stands as a cautionary tale of unchecked ambition in the tech world.