Plenty of companies have high burn rates due to high R&D costs. It can make them look unprofitable on paper, but it's a tactic used to scale quicker, get economies of scale, higher leverage in negotiating, etc. It's not a requirement that they invest in R&D indefinitely. In contrast, if a company is paying a heavy amount of interest on loans (think: WeWork), it's not nearly as practical for them to cut away at their spending to find profitability.
