When I worked at mega corps, I'd see a "new" tech emerged that was always very similar to a software that our company had developed to solve similar issues. I remember terraform getting released and seeing that it was just an inferior version of the Cloud Formation Template generator someone at my company had invented years prior.

I've seen this happen so many times and every time, I'm surprised that more businesses don't spin off cool internal projects like this into startups. Hashicorp's market cap is roughly 10% of the market cap of the megacorp I used to work for. And right now, my team is working on an internal project to fill the gaps left by various authentication providers we use. But instead of spinning this off into it's own business, they are just kind of waiting around for someone else to develop a better product so they can buy it instead.

It was explained to me that investors generally don't like spinning off internal projects because it can be a distraction, but it does feel like investors are leaving a billion+ dollars on the table. Especially given the absurd P/E multiples software startups enjoy.

To circle this comment back, I think a lot of staff engineers are working on the next generation of cool technology right now. But they might be working at boring old companies, like a massive retailer, and eventually that internal project will get replaced by one built by the engineer who decides to venture on their own and replicate what they were building as a stand-alone product.