Isn't circular funding how the entire economy works?
I can see how you could make an argument that this particular ouroboros has an insufficient loop area to sustain itself, or more significantly, lacks connection to the rest of the economy, but money has to flow in circles/cycles or it doesn't work at all.
Only when using non aligned intwrests, like government funding roads.
When interests directly align and parties are largely owned by the same people, its wash trading.
The point of wash trading is to make activity increase the value of an asset via a netzero activity. Since nothing is generated from the activity its circular, eg, nothing physical changes hands.
Crypto trading is the golden child of wash trading as the primary mode of increasing the value of an asset.
Its unsurprising then that the company that got rich on crypto wash trading is doing its own attempts to drive artificial demand.
Parties in an economy don't normally buy something that they sell at the same time. It's hazier than that here, but still looks like Nvidia is buying GPUs from itself via OpenAI and Oracle.
Btw there are examples involving sanctioned economies. Most US saffron comes from Spain, all of whose saffron comes from Iran. Azerbaijan exports way more gas than they produce, cause they also buy from Russia.