12 Tech Disasters That Lost Millions

The annals of tech abound with failure. By some measure, the failures allow us to realize success. It is simply impossible to conceive of developing new technologies with 100% success every time. However, investment into development is not cheap, nor is it inexpensive to get things in the hands of consumers.

While failure on some level is imminent, the amount of money involved and the frequency with which it happens is staggering. With billions on the line, invested into bringing hardware and software to market, multiple events can transpire to set it all off on the wrong course. Sometimes outside forces such as weather and volatile market conditions can derail a project while other times sheer ineptitude and a lack of due diligence on the part of investors can wipe out fortunes. But while opportunities to get rich continue to exist, so too will the opportunities to erase your net worth in an instant. Here are 12 times a tech disaster lost someone millions.

In an era before jets ruled the skies, shipbuilding was among the most technologically advanced transportation industries. Building on the knowledge and expertise developed since seafaring humans set to water, shipbuilders of the early 20th century built magnificent vessels capable of feats not imaginable a generation before. 

Built-in the shipyards of Belfast, the RMS Titanic represented the best and newest shipbuilding techniques and technology of its time and had been celebrated for representing a new era of ocean travel, with accommodations and luxury never before seen on the water. The shipbuilders were so proud of their ship-making skills that they arrogantly proclaimed the vessel to be unsinkable.

The Titanic proved to be a sinkable vessel on the night of April 15, 1912, when it sank to the ocean floor after colliding with an iceberg. According to Brittanica, several oversights and mishaps contributed to the collision along with a series of bad decisions bolstered by the hubris of thinking the ship unsinkable. 

While the tragedy of lost human life, 1517 people dead, cannot be measured in dollars or pounds, the financial cost to the ship's owner, White Star Lines, was immense. Investopedia estimates the Titanic cost $7.5 million to build in 1912 dollars and that represents about $400 million in today's money. Considering brand new cruise ships can cost more than a billion dollars, that estimate is reasonable. Furthermore, costs associated with the fallout continued to mount long after the ship sank.

The successful launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union set the space race into top gear, and the U.S. responded by putting as much effort into space exploration as possible. One of the efforts was the Mariner I research craft, which set off to study Venus in 1962 (via Mental Floss). According to NASA's statment about the cost, "Total research, development, launch, and support costs for the Mariner series of spacecraft (Mariners 1 through 10) were approximately $554 million." According to the US Inflation Calculator, the total in today's money exceeds $5 billion. If the costs were evenly divided among all 10 spacecraft, Mariner I cost $500 million.

The craft was intended to fly by Venus and collect data about the planet. The Soviet Union had already attempted to reach Venus and failed. Electrical Design Magazine's details of the mission report the spacecraft started to veer off course due to an unscheduled yaw-lift maneuver. Ground control sent an abort command just 293 seconds into the mission.

In a review of the flight, NASA discovered a missing hyphen in the code that allowed incorrect guidance signals to be sent to the craft. While failed missions are built into many plans from NASA, the failure due to a single character of code could be seen by some as a disastrous waste of taxpayer dollars. A second spacecraft was already prepared and launched within months of the Mariner I failure and became the first successful planetary discovery mission from Earth.

The modern digital age presents all manner of opportunities for nefarious digital activities with the threat of viruses, trojan horses, keyloggers, and more circulating online. Dozens of companies have created software to combat these threats, contributing to a thriving and profitable industry. However, there was a time before these threats existed, when few people anywhere even used a computer, much less one on a network.

In the early days, networked computers existed in universities and the majority of its users were research students. This was a precursor to the world wide web and the internet of today. Out of sheer curiosity to see just how many users connected to the network, Robert Morris created a program to help him track users. What he created accidentally became the first computer virus, as it quickly replicated itself, spread to other computers on the network, and caused multiple systems to overload and crash.

The fallout caused the burgeoning world of computer users to recognize the potential for damage that can be caused by improper lines of code and resulted in the first conviction under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Morris received a light sentence as he had no nefarious intentions and the resulting damage was an accident. However, fixing the problems required hours of work to clean up and reboot the systems, and the FBI estimates the damage to have cost anywhere from $100,000 to $10 million.

Steve Jobs sprung the iPod on an unsuspecting public at a time when most people had only recently come to grips with the reality that everything they know was headed for the digital realm. Internet was getting faster and technologies to facilitate entertainment via digital platforms popped up seemingly weekly.

The iPod was a rousing success for Apple and many companies introduced mp3 players around the same time, but none of them enjoyed the market share of the iPod (via MacWorld). With the size and strength of Microsoft, the company should have been able to compete with its own player. It achieved success with the XBOX game system and Windows was still the most used operating system in the world, so why didn't the Zune work?

According to Medium, the Zune was a high-quality product with an enjoyable interface. Its specifications were comparable to the iPod, and it performed comparably as well. However, the conclusions are that Microsoft failed in marketing the devices and targeted either too narrow a crowd or just the wrong crowd altogether. Poor timing likely also contributed to its demise, being five years behind its biggest competitor. In 2007, Tech Crunch reported on Microsoft profits being off by $289 million as a result of the slow-selling Zune, which had been discounted from its original retail of $229 down to $168. By 2011, the Zune was killed off completely.

Samsung is arguably the premier Android smartphone maker and has held that title for many years. While the Korean company has been producing all manner of electronics for decades, their phones are the device most people associate with the brand, and for good reason. The Galaxy Note capitalized on a trend of growing smartphone screens at a time when most phones were not considerably larger than a deck of cards. The Note series took off and became one of Samsung's best sellers. But growth is not always without growing pains.

Not long after the introduction of the Galaxy Note 7 series, reports started popping up of people's phones spontaneously combusting, smoking, and smoldering themselves into a semi-molten lump of worthless electronic junk. When problems arise on one of the best-selling devices on the planet, news stories are quick to follow. The Note 7 fires gained notoriety and Samsung had to act fast, not only to save face in the public eye but to minimize any liability for injuries or damage caused by the phone. In the end, Samsung directed all Note 7 owners to power down their devices and issued a recall costing the company an estimated $17 billion, according to Reuters.

Bitcoin is now common parlance among finance types. Its history is short but weaves a twisted tale. Bitcoin is a digital currency not backed by any central bank. It is traded solely by moving digital packets between computer servers with other servers checking the validity and authenticity of the packets. These packets, or wallets, can be stored on an exchange, a sort of repository for digital currency.

Mark Karpeles ran Mt. Gox around 2010 and had accumulated a substantial amount of Bitcoin in its reserves — it was responsible for nearly 70% of all Bitcoin transactions at the time, (via Investopedia). This not only made it a popular place for people willing to bet on cryptocurrency, but it also made for a very attractive target for hackers with nefarious intent. 

As Wired explains, Mt. Gox suffered two different hacks, one small and one large. The smaller breach resulted in a limited number of Bitcoin being taken and the issue had been seemingly resolved with the stolen coins replaced by Mt. Gox. The second hack, which some speculate is part of an ongoing attempt from the first, was larger and led to a loss of 650,000 to 850,000 bitcoin valued at billions of dollars.

The fallout led to charges and a conviction against Karpeles in a Japanese court. 200,000 bitcoin in possession of Karpeles were recovered, but the vast majority were long gone and left customers of Mt. Gox with little to show for their holdings.