Resulting models will likely be released as open source, and the techniques published in open journals.

The big money is in productionizing and running it on bigger datasets.

Kaggle competitions are not a data-science-product-for-hire kind of thing, like some kind of logo design contest. It is a sport. Super GM chess competitions see smaller prize pools.

Mediocre people, including me, would compete for free (just to get access to interesting data like this). The really talented people are not driven by money, but by competition and fame.

Increasing the prize money is more of a marketing move and only attracts more low-to-mediocre people trying to get lucky in a lottery: It won't increase the quality of top 10 solutions. And no computer vision PhD/professor is going to drop everything he/she is working on for a small chance to win 400k.

If it's as you say, then OK.

But it did look like a fishing expedition for ideas worth far in excess of $60,000, which smelled exploitative