I also worked in a public company that bought a lot of companies during the pandemic and had to sell or shut them down in the wake of 2024.

My cynical take is that a lot of VC/fund bros need their cash during the pandemic and they saw a high in the market so installed their friends to buy those assets. Scroll forward 5, 6 years, they now do the reverse to pump up stock prices of those parent companies and win big again.

It has nothing to do with the parent companies themselves. They are just a tool to pump and dump.