Yeah I'm 100% sure they are doing this A) for good PR (blender is a beloved app and funding them is awesome) b) to retain communication with the team for easier agent integration later c) to lobby for their AI.

I can totally understand that it doesn't look great if blender accepts the money.

I am sure though that blender could probably need the money; open source software is criminally underfunded and those devs need money to survive at the end of the day.