I suppose if the funds are earmarked for development only and can't be liquidated or used for buybacks then they're essentially already gone. If you assume that development has decreasing marginal utility (so spending $1B won't make Tezos much better than spending $200M) then I can imagine that investors would rather have their money back than have Tezos. Kind like how I'd rather have 1 BTC than my Trezor.