We're preparing to shut it down or keep it running on low infrastructure costs. And that's why I've slowly started looking for my next job (and considered the startup prematurely as failed in the context of that post).

Okay, this is a twist I didn’t see coming.

Failure is relative - perhaps they decided that there is still some hope.

At least I would switch regularly between "oh, let's give it up" and "no, there is still hope" :)

Perhaps the "sunken cost fallacy"...

well given it has strong traction but no money another way of describing that might be failed?