There are multi-million dollar projects churned out and abandoned multiple times per day. Very common.

I just left a company where I was contracting with a few other people for about a year. About $1.2MM down the drain. There is no hope of spinning that product up. The owners "suspended" the project and the entire brain trust evaporated. Imagine the bank owners from the movie Mary Poppins interfacing with technologists and startup founders. Whoosh...