DEC also blew a fortune on the ECL VAX.

"Meanwhile, the engineering team's predictions about the relentless march of CMOS proved true. By 1991, the NVAX was also on the market, offering roughly the same performance for a tiny fraction of the cost and size. At lower performance settings the same design was available in desktop form, outperforming all previous VAX machines. The 9000 managed not only to lose billions of dollars, but also led to the ending of several much more promising designs."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAX_9000

DEC also lost Dave Cutler's team over PRISM, which was also a deep cut. Deeper than the ECL disaster? Debatable.

DEC had no hope in the ECL money furnace and the loss of the VMS architect.