The tech leaders that exploded during the pandemic then fizzled

Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Semenova previews a new series that will outline the tech names whose pandemic boom went bust.

Video Transcript

- Welcome back, everyone. Checking in on tech. Despite seeing a vast acceleration during the pandemic, the boom had been gathering pace for years. The so-called FAANG stocks were already outpacing major benchmarks long before COVID-19 arrived. Then a bucket load of easy money came fresh and gave fresh momentum to plays like Zoom, Uber, and DoorDash. But with any tech boom comes pressure and turnover from the likes of Adam Neumann to Travis Kalanick. We've seen this movie before over the years. Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Semenova we'll be taking a closer look in a new series. Alex, what can you tell us?

ALEXANDRA SEMENOVA: Well, Brad, there's been a lot of talk of the pandemic-era boom and bust, and rightfully so, because we've seen so many companies just explode last year. We've seen a lot of new businesses emerge. And then, of course, as the Federal Reserve began its tightening campaign, we're watching it all go downhill for many of these businesses. But another interesting component of this boom and bust stories is the business leaders behind these companies, leaders that we've seen on the covers of magazines, leaders that we've seen praised for their success as they rode this pandemic boom are now watching it go downhill.

Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX are, of course, the most abrupt example of this. But there are a lot of names in the space who haven't been accused of fraud or any wrongdoing but maybe made really bad bets that investors are now paying for. And even though there's no criminality for many of them, there are comparisons to be drawn. It's overzealousness. It's corporate greed, poor investments, and on the part of investors, lack of proper due diligence as they rushed to allocate capital. So this series is going to explore that and how the era of free money contributed to that.