Well, a cursory glance into the funding round shows an equity firm (Highland Europe) which had one of their partners moved into a director position at Deepski. Could be the guy collecting "AI leadership experience" for his resume.

Another notable investor is a french public entity (bpifrance) which might very well have similar reasons but on the country level, having to allocate funds to "AI" to demonstrate France leading role in future technology.

Note that this doesn't mean Deepski and it's leadership can't be great - but the thought experiment of some well networked people noticing they could all benefit over a glass of wine also doesn't seem too far off.

Edit: Maybe there's an angle for someone really serious about this FOSS dilemma here, I hear public entities really hate bad PR - maybe ask bpifrance how they feel about this?

Highland Europe is private equity.

> I am dumbfounded by the degree of mismatch between capital and utility

That's often a sign of money laundering

If they do some decarbonization real estate SaaS and need connections with both regulators or whoever issues certificates and REITs etc, then it makes sense. I don't think they need a lot of software for that.