Someone probably gets fired so I guess someone does pay the ultimate price.

Losing your job because the outcome of your efforts (or even external events) is not what I would call the ultimate price.

"The metaverse division has now lost more than $45 billion since the end of 2020"

Your compensation for your work is your salery. So I would say that it's fair that the actual risk taker is benefiting from the potential rewards?

The "risk takers" are not taking at any risk at all. What's the chance they end up on the street, or even suffer personal financial stress about their life? That they will have to move, sell their car, home, etc. It's 0%.

What.. they are taking a lot of risk...

But I guess we first have to agree on "who" we are taking about - is it the company itself or the owner / shareholders ?

Back to your question, yes that could happen in several different cases. But of course the risk/benefit is not split 50/50 (nor 0 risk, 100 upside, as you said), in reality the future outcome depends on both internal and external events.

Even the richest(?) man in the world was relatively close to loosing it all;

Musk, who had $200 million in cash at one point, invested “his last cent in his businesses” and said in a 2010 divorce proceeding, “About four months ago, I ran out of cash.” Musk told the New York Times https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/27/the-crucial-decision-teslas-... https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/...

Is it an offer to become a shareholder without actually buying any shares? That would be absolutely great, but unfortunately, it doesn't work this way.

That's the beauty of it, you can choose to spend you money how you want!

You wouldn't want all your earnings to be in stocks, you want liquidity. For example investing your earned money into a public company, or buying food.