The €4.5M business investment in 2000 was to make it a freemium product. This obviously failed, which is why the community was able to acquire the rights via a

The €4.5M business investment in 2000 was to make it a freemium product. This obviously failed, which is why the community was able to acquire the rights via a €110k crowdfund. Just because they shoveled a lot of money into it, doesn't mean they actually created a great product. Blender wouldn't have been open-source today if the investors didn't decide to shut down the (quite incomplete) project due to disappointing sales. The next substantial investment was a €1.2M grant in 2019, and it was a direct result of the development of 2.80, both the new GUI and other improvements. It suddenly became an actual viable alternative to commercial products, making it worth investing in. These developments only happened due to the hard work of mostly volunteers, and a lot of donations from primarily the community.