Plus, most of that money is probably intended to focus on building landing pads since that's still NASA's biggest "unknown" risk factor regarding bringing large

Plus, most of that money is probably intended to focus on building landing pads since that's still NASA's biggest "unknown" risk factor regarding bringing large amounts of cargo down to the lunar surface. It isn't really clear if a large lander like Starship would be at risk of digging itself into a hole (and potentially tossing regolith into an orbit such that it comes around and hits the lander or surrounding infrastructure) if it landed using its main thrusters. For now the HLS design includes separate landing thrusters higher up, but since those add more complexity they're probably fairly interested in exploring other possibilities.