A lot of people have a really bizarre model of technological advancement wherein rich people point money at arbitrary problems and Science then solves them Rather than the slow cumulative growth of knowledge, which eventually yields expected or unexpected practical applications

As a result they assume that any unsolved problems are the direct result of rich people who do not care enough about them, or who are actively conspiring to maintain them in order to profit from non-solutions

In reality it's very easy to not direct money at basic research and very difficult to keep money from flowing where there are obvious practical applications, so insofar as rich benefactors have influence it's where practical applications are as yet very far off or opaque