Your last paragraph is no longer really correct. The largest rewards have for some time been going to equity plays and financial schemes. You don't build a company for customers but for the next round of investors, and your product is its stock. In the extreme these can be highly clever and polished versions of the "big store" scam where nearly all actual value is flimsy or illusory.

This is because all the money is now at the top. Your customers are the ones who can pay.

A related phenomenon is Internet companies where the user is the product. Advertisers and others who want user data or access to attention have far more money to spend than users. Computing has transformed into a surveillance platform to monetize users because users are not the ones paying for anything.