Making investments that produce a positive return, by supplying consumers with higher quality goods and services at a lower cost, is not rent-seeking.
And if the investors collect economic rent from the workers' output, then the workers collect economic rent every time an investor hires them for a project in which the investor loses money.
But under the standard Economics definition of "economic rent", a positive investment return from a project in which a person risked investment capital and the worker provided labor in exchange for a guaranteed wage is not economic rent that was extracted by the investor.