I don't think it's right to categorize "no consequences".

Leadership made a decision and that decision was bad. This happens all the time, including allocating budget for staff. Any effective organization is going to judge the outcomes of these types of decisions and it's going to come up in performance and hiring. If this was an isolated situation then possibly they won't fire anyone over it. But you really need the context to judge whether the response was correct.

Wasting company resources and making the company look bad in the press won't be rewarded, and that includes at the board level to the CEO.

If the only consequence is that they're not rewarded, then it seems like it's very fair to categorize it as "no consequences".

Even if you categorize missing out on some bonus or something as a consequence, it pales in comparison to the damage they've done and the lives they've severely disrupted and possibly irreparably damaged by firing people on a whim. (And I consider firing people because you fell for the AI hype / obvious marketing to be a whim)

oh poor babies they got sad their human sacrifices didn't work, that's surely as much punishment as losing your livelihood because a pack of morons act randomly based on feels.