> Seems insane to assume that but we see it in tech all the time where someone unknowingly spends a ton of money on reinventing something that already exists.

There are a couple of reasons for that. The most obvious is that they did not do their research prior to embarking on the project. The less obvious is they did extensive research before embarking upon the project. Plenty of tech popped up in the 70's and 80's that flopped or only found a niche market, that later turned out to be quite popular. Sometimes the tech wasn't ready, other times it was just too expensive when it was introduced, yet other times he market simply wasn't ready for it.