First, note that it's some people; maybe they weren't the ones who started the project, or had changed their minds. Second, I've heard that VCs expect 9 of 10 investments to fall completely flat; while this isn't as bad as that, research projects have to be expected to sometimes be dead-ends. Finally, it was stage 2/5; could be the platform was simply growing faster than they'd expected, but not ready for the plans they had for some higher step...

I don't know anything, of course, but I am completely free to talk.