Gentoo bans AI-created contributions

A difference is that with more traditional investments the entity doing the investment is one that pretty directly stands to benefit from the R&D being done. For example, AT&T investing into developing the transistor, or the US government developing nuclear-resistant networks, as you mentioned. Conversely, VCs are remarkable for just how little they care what the actual technology is. Some even write gloating blog posts about how virtuous they think they are for basing investment decisions solely on how charistmatic they think the founders are and they don't even look at the slide decks or financials.

This makes sense, because at some point the industry realized that their primary way of getting paid is only rarely the technologies actually working out, and more commonly just using their elite connections to find a bigger sucker as fast as possible. This detachment from any of the effects of any of their investments may have some arguable advantages, kodak inventing and then killing the digital camera comes to mind. But it also runs the risk of, say, growing an entire sector around repeatedly wasting a medium sized countries GDP on things that nobody wants or needs and then trying to hype up everyone else to buy it off them for more.