I was involved in a (obviously smaller) situation with an acquisition that went to a top consumer CPU maker (you can guess). The investors got nothing as the buyout money was used to fund new pivots in the existing company. So no options or shares were monetized and investors maintained their existing stake that had technically the save value, just most of the value was temporarily all cash. The only people to make out were the ones who went with the asset sale (retention bonus stuff) and the leadership that stayed (raises, etc.)